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The Importance of D&I and How It Should Be Viewed in the 21st Century with Mita Mallick.
43 Plays3 years ago
This week, for the first episode of Season 2 of “The 3D Podcast” host Cedric Chambers sits down with the Head of Inclusion, Equity, and Impact at Carta, Mita Mallick. During this interview Mita shares great insight into the function of D,E&I as well as provides unique stories on how she was impacted by racism at a young age. This is a great episode packed with a ton of gems, so get your notepads ready as we dive deep and “Discuss the Dimensions of Diversity”.
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Transcript
Introduction to 3D Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey, I'm Cedric Chambers, and I would like to welcome you to another episode of the 3D Podcast, a masterclass where we share with you everything you need to know about how to transform diversity and inclusion in your organization as well as in your community. We're on a mission to amplify the voices of leaders that are making an impact in the world today so that we can have a better tomorrow.
00:00:34
Speaker
Our goal every episode is to keep it simple, honest, and transparent with you by uncovering the truths in diversity and inclusion with the hope of creating behavioral change all while presenting it from a unique perspective. So look, if you're ready, get your notepad out, pour you a drink, and let's dive deep as we discuss the dimensions of diversity.
00:01:04
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the 3D Podcast. This is your host, Cedric, and I'm excited for our discussion today.
Meet Mita Malek
00:01:10
Speaker
Today, we are speaking to Mita Malek. Mita is a corporate change maker with a track record of transforming businesses and cultures. Mita is a passionate storyteller who believes in the power of diversity to spur creative thinking, which can ultimately transform brands. Mita currently serves as the head of inclusion, equity, and impact at Carta.
00:01:30
Speaker
Mita was named a Working Mother of the Year by She Runs It and named a Valiente Award finalist at SXSW for her inspiring work in 2019. Mita has been featured in Forbes and Quoted in the New York Times. She received the inaugural Diversity Innovator Award from the National Association for Female Executives and was on the 50 People Under 40 Shaken Up Beauty Youth Quake List by Women's Wear Daily.
00:01:55
Speaker
She is also a columnist for Sway, a contributor for Entrepreneur and Working Mother. Her writings have been published in Harvard Business Review, New York Post, Business Insider, Cosmopolitan, Bass Company, The Good Man Project, and Scary Mommy. She's a game changer. She's a rock star. And you better recognize. Without further ado, I'm excited. I'm excited to introduce you all to my guest, Miss Meeta Malik. So hi, Meeta. How are you doing today?
00:02:24
Speaker
Great, Cedric, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation. No, no, look, I am excited to have this conversation. I don't think that we spoke about this in our previous discussion, but I have been following you for quite some time now. I know that I think I first connected with you on LinkedIn and I've been, you know, over the years in 2017, I believe, is the connection. I've been following you from some of your past roles and
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, as I was looking at different diversity or change leaders in the market, people who spoke on the different topics, people who had good conversations and good things to say, I always saw that, you know, even at your past, you know, companies that you've been in and things like that. I've seen that, you know, the information that you've provided has just been great.
00:03:08
Speaker
And I've always enjoyed reading it. So that makes me even more excited to have this discussion today and to talk a little bit more with you. So to start off the conversation, you know, I think it's appropriate to get, you know, some background and some information about you. I know you have a very, very interesting story. And, you know, I know the audience would just love to hear more about it. And so can you just start to kind of walk us through your journey, you know, as you're going through your background, your journey, kind of how you developed in your career,
00:03:36
Speaker
getting to the place you are today. I would love to just start there and kind of walk us through how you got to where you are today.
Mita's Early Life Experiences
00:03:43
Speaker
So my story starts in Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. And I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrant parents when my younger brother and I were born and raised here. And people asked me, how did I get to where I am today? How did I get to Cedric's podcast? Why am I here? Looking at work, it really starts from a place of feeling like from a very young age, I didn't belong. And you were one of three families of color growing up in our town.
00:04:14
Speaker
And I was the funny looking dark skinned girl with a funny looking long braid whose parents had a funny accent and they played funny music. They dropped me off in a funny looking van that played funny looking music. And I brought the funny smelling lunch to school until it wasn't funny anymore. And that is where I think
00:04:40
Speaker
It becomes the dark side of bullying, harassment, exclusion, whatever words you want to use. But when we start to other people because they're different than us and we aren't intentional about making a connection, when we see so many differences on the surface, that's where it starts. And I was bullied both
00:05:01
Speaker
heavily, verbally and physically growing up. And so that was for much of my formative years. And at the same time, I was being raised in a world where I feel like I didn't belong. And so there weren't brands, there weren't products and services that spoke to me. And I was really,
00:05:20
Speaker
in desperation of black and brown role models. And I always joke, I was obsessed with the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Tatiana Ali. Love, love me. I love Athens. And I really identify with the black community. I don't identify as black, but identify with the black community because being
00:05:39
Speaker
born and raised in this country as a young brown girl, I was also looking for role models. And wow, has the world changed, right? When you think about the world today, we pulled up Instagram. There are so many amazing, inclusive brands, so many brands that are being founded by amazing, talented black and brown leaders.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so it's a very different world that my children are being raised in. But honestly, Cedric, it goes back to this feeling of never wanting anyone to feel excluded the way I did growing up. And then, of course, no surprise that I went into marketing for many years because I was very passionate about thinking about why am I not being reflected? Who gets to pick what stories are being told? Why do we think about
00:06:22
Speaker
inclusive design. Why isn't that something that's top of mind? I can tell you for years I wore the wrong shade of foundation because I just couldn't find anything at this point that would work for my skin tone. So that was my journey as a marketer. And then when I was at Unilever, my then CEO asked me to take on this assignment.
00:06:42
Speaker
to need inclusion for the company they had never had anyone do that before so if i share that all that background with you it then would make sense to you. Why i'm here today and of course i'm just a few weeks in now to my role at card up which is a company we're all about creating more owners and more ownership in the world and creating a fair and equitable place and i am.
00:07:03
Speaker
their new head of inclusion, equity, and impact. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. As you was going through your story and you think about the different products that you did not see growing up, I'm curious to know on this spectrum, was there ever this aha moment in your life when you realized your own racial identity and just the difference you brought to the table versus your environment? What age were you when you realized that?
00:07:31
Speaker
How did that impact you as you grew up and as you transitioned into your career?
Identity and Career Challenges
00:07:36
Speaker
That's a great question. I often get asked this by white leaders when people come to me for my counsel and say, how do I have a courageous conversation on race?
00:07:46
Speaker
And as me, Mita, as a human being, I think to myself, wow, that's from a place of privilege if you've never had to have a courageous conversation on race, because I think I was born in the greatest conversations on race, and I'm sure you can relate to that. I think growing up, one of my first memories was we had a neighbor
00:08:07
Speaker
who had a daughter who was like my age, and he had gotten a new bike that summer. And I remember all the kids, we were in a cul-de-sac, and all the kids, end of a cul-de-sac, all the kids ran to her house to try the new bike. It was like with the basket and all those cool things. And all the kids were taking turns, and when it was my turn, and I was the only brown child there, only child of color, she said to me, well, my parents tell me that I'm allergic to the color of your skin, so I'm sorry, you can't get on my bike.
00:08:39
Speaker
And I was just sort of and I was very young like I think it was. It must have been in first grade. It was young and I just and actually I in that moment thought it was true and I felt really bad and ashamed.
00:08:54
Speaker
And so that was one of my first memories. And when I even think about that memory, and I even think about being bullied over the years, it is really time wasted, I think, googling the bullies like you Google X's, right? Because I do that. Like, where are these bullies now? What are these people doing in their lives? Because it is a path to forgiveness that I'm on. And at the same time, where are the parents?
00:09:17
Speaker
Where was law enforcement? Where are the teachers? Where are the community leaders? And this happens, Cedric, in our organizations as well. So I don't actually blame that other five-year-old. I blame her parents because children are canvases. They're blank canvases. And they are being raised. There are mirrors. They mirror us. So that was the first childhood experience. I think the first experience when I knew I would be treated in corporate America differently, I was a
00:09:46
Speaker
I was a senior at Columbia University and I was doing an internship at one of the big investment banks in the city during the school year. I'll never forget that I kept getting mistaken for an executive assistant.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I was doing analyst work and that was probably the first time when people would come up to me and ask me to make copies or water. And not that you don't do that as an intern, but I was doing analyst work. So it was clear to me that there was already a social stratification within that bank where the majority of black and brown individuals were executive assistants.
00:10:23
Speaker
And so that was really fascinating to me that that would happen over and over again. And I tried to wrap my head around that. So those are probably the two moments and you just, that's the first time anyone's asked me that. That's the first time I've talked about either of the stories publicly. First of all, to have that type of
00:10:42
Speaker
a comment made and to be in the first grade. And I think a sumo around that time is probably about six or seven years old. And I know there's a lot of studies that talk about just those first early years of a child's life and how influential they are to what they learn, you know, all the information they're consuming. And so just to know that, you know, you had to experience that at that, that young of an age is something that
00:11:07
Speaker
you know, when you think about the work that you do today, it's like, you can almost look back and say, you know, this is kind of, you know, what you were, you know, what one of the things that you've been kind of prepped for, right? Because to just think about to be allergic to the color of your skin.
00:11:23
Speaker
I mean, that is a harsh thing. And it's also, you know, it's interesting, Cedric, there are many memories we all have that we carry with us. We're very strong. This one is particularly strong because she apologized and she was very sweet about it. So it's also how we, the biases, I would say the racism, the prejudice, the discrimination, all the words and language we want to use, how deeply it's ceded.
00:11:45
Speaker
because it wasn't it wasn't for a place of anger like get off my bike you're not gonna touch it it was very like i'm i'm allergic to the color of your skin and you think my god like that's real as a as a first grader you think that and that's and i felt feeling very ashamed and very sad and sorry
00:12:05
Speaker
I guess a quick question there is, did she apologize in the midst of it or shortly after? Or just later on down the line? No, in the midst of it, I'm sorry you can't get on my bike because my parents have told me that you can't get on my bike. It's interesting because it makes it even more normalized. The racism is even more normalized versus don't touch my bike. I don't want you on my bike.
00:12:30
Speaker
because I'm allergic to the clog or something. There was no anger. It's actually was delivered in a very kind way, which also is, as you know, it's like that's when I think racism is the most dangerous. Yeah. It's almost like, I mean, she was just following directions, right? Right, exactly. And it's the most dangerous. And I think it's the hardest to unroot and the hardest to uncover where it's coming from.
00:12:57
Speaker
No, that's a, I mean, that's a, that's a great story. And I mentioned this, when you think about even in your career, when, when getting mistaken for the executive admin is how did that, did they have an impact or how did it impact you when you think about how you showed up from an authenticity standpoint at work? I think many people of color, and I will specifically identify as a brown woman, woman of color, just have to work twice as hard.
00:13:25
Speaker
three times as hard, four times as hard, five times as hard. And so this constant need for me to go above and beyond what everyone else did was because I wanted to be recognized and valued. And when I enter rooms, the first thing you see about me is my brownness. It is there. It is who I am. I am proud of it. But there are judgments that are made.
00:13:52
Speaker
as when I walk into the room, just like I'm sure other judgments made for you and other individuals who are listening to us right now. So it is the constant wanting to counteract that.
00:14:06
Speaker
the constant wanting to counteract that. I would tell you, doing this work has also been incredibly healing for me. I would not say that I was likely as authentic as I could have been in my earlier years of my career. I certainly am now because I feel very strongly that I'm a role model for so many people and there are so many role models that are out there for me.
00:14:31
Speaker
And so it's important for me to be authentic and share my truth and share my story and not be ashamed of who I am or embarrassed of who I am.
00:14:41
Speaker
I think that's amazing. The more we can share our story, the more we can get that out there, the more that others can take grab of it and use it for their own success or give them a path and a journey that they can start to get some inspiration and motivation and continue to move forward.
Impact of George Floyd's Death on D&I
00:14:56
Speaker
That's great. Thank you for sharing that. As we transition a little bit, we think about what all has happened
00:15:02
Speaker
you know, in the year, you know, that we're in right now. So, you know, this year just has been, you know, a lot of increased action in organizations around diversity and inclusion. I mean, you've had the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Atiana Jefferson, Rayshard Brooks, and I'm just naming a few of the people, you know, more organizations have decided to hire someone to come and lead diversity and inclusion. And in most cases, it's a chief diversity officer.
00:15:28
Speaker
And so kind of a two-part question here. One, why are organizations just now truly understanding the importance of diversity and inclusion? And if possible, as a leader being in those discussions at the highest levels, could you provide some insight into how diversity and inclusion was viewed before the tragic events that have happened in 2020? There has been the killing and murder of so many Black unarmed
00:15:58
Speaker
citizens at the hands of police brutality. And so many names that we can't even list in this conversation. And so you ask yourself, why was George Floyd the tipping point? And I think it's because it was the flame that was ignited in our country that just reignited, and likely because of pandemic. And there's many theories out there of all the things that came together that made this a moment. And progress has been slow. And people finally say, enough is enough.
00:16:28
Speaker
And so this is the moment and this is the tipping point.
00:16:31
Speaker
I would say that what I think has changed in this environment, that it's the first time that many, I would say, individuals who identify as white leaders come to me and ask me for advice on what is the journey to being an ally and advocate for the Black community and what can they be doing. And so that has been really encouraging to me because I do this job, I have to be a half glass full person, right? I think in order to do this work, you have to be
00:17:00
Speaker
eternally optimistic in order to continue to push for progress. And what I also think has changed your question is what has changed? The demographics of this country is changing so quickly. So no one can ignore that, you know, according to Nielsen last year, black African-American spending power of the community in this country is one point three trillion dollars.
00:17:27
Speaker
you add up the entire however you identify multicultural consumers. It's over $3 trillion. It cannot be ignored. So if you were sitting here listening to this podcast and you don't have a plan, no matter what you're doing, product, service, whatever you're saying, you don't have a plan to reach the multicultural consumer, multicultural America, you have to ask yourself how you will be in business in 10 years.
00:17:55
Speaker
And so I think that is also the difference because we know that diversity of thought has become coded language. It doesn't happen without diversity representation. We need those voices around the table from as many communities as possible. And those voices need to feel that they can be heard and it's psychologically safe. But I think at the same time, you can no longer separate how your products and services show up in the marketplace and you no longer
00:18:23
Speaker
a check a box and say, well, I did a campaign and there was some black talent featured as a business. Or if you're sitting in the marketing seat, that those two things are interconnected. And as I've been advising some board members who have come to me, so thinking about
00:18:39
Speaker
you know, all the sort of hierarchy and power in organizations and where it sits. If you sit on a board, you should not only be asking about the DE&I plan and to see that, but you should also be asking about growth rates with communities. If we know that Black, African American, Hispanic, Latinx are two of the biggest segments, I want to see the growth plans. What are the plans to authentically serve these communities with purpose?
00:19:07
Speaker
I believe for the first time, I believe it was last year before where non-Hispanic whites dropped below 50% for children under the age of 15. And that's only gonna increase as we move forward. And as the United States comes just more of a representation of the world from a melting pot perspective, but not only when you think about externally from the United States, non-Hispanic whites are a minority overall. And so when we think about just everything that's changing,
00:19:37
Speaker
and the organizations and what they're
Role of Chief Diversity Officers
00:19:40
Speaker
doing today. It's like one of those things to where if we think about growth blueprint or growth strategy, 10, 12, 15 years, the same way you look at your business, the way you're trying to launch products, the way you're trying to develop new technology, the way you're thinking about stuff in 2030, 2035,
00:19:59
Speaker
needs to be the same when you think about diversity. Because that's what's going to happen, right, as more and more... I don't even know what generation we're on with letters now. But as more and more come into the workforce and start to...
00:20:17
Speaker
you know, start to find their own paths, right? I think with every generation, you got different attitudes, different personalities, and not quite sure how the next generation is going to approach it. But I can definitely say that it probably won't be like it is today because the world is going to look a lot different at that point. Absolutely. And to your earlier question on
00:20:40
Speaker
organizations now looking to hire chief diversity officers. I wrote a piece for Harvard Business Review that our listeners can read called, Do You Know Why You Need a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer? Because to your point, with the landscape having changed dramatically the way it did in 2020, everyone is looking to hire somebody. And you have to be setting this person up for success.
00:21:05
Speaker
And so you can read the article in detail, but three of the things I talk about principally is one is where does this role sit? So if you are going to bring in somebody to be your CDO or your head of diversity or whatever the title is, and they sit three levels below the CEO and it's buried in leadership and development in HR, stop the search now.
00:21:29
Speaker
Because full stop, just stop. Don't waste your time. Don't waste candidates' time because that is not how you're going to be able to change and influence your culture and relook at some of the systems that likely need to be dismantled and rebuilt in a lot of organizations. And so where the person sits in my prior role, I reported into the CHRO.
00:21:50
Speaker
with the dotted line in the CEO and this role I set in the office of the CEO report back into HR. It doesn't matter except to say it matters that they have access to the C-suite.
00:22:02
Speaker
And then I think the second thing to really think about is budget. You need to pay people fairly for the work they're going to bring and the expertise. But at the same time, not one person is going to show up and wave a magic wand and fix whatever needs fixing or lift whatever needs lifted. Like depending on the size of your organization, you've got to help this individual build a team. And sometimes it's the promise of the team that you need to fulfill. So the person comes in and sort of does a,
00:22:29
Speaker
sort of lay of the land and understanding where you are in the journey, but also making sure that you're going to invest in partnerships and invest back in the communities where you want to attract talent because the pipelines are out there. It's about building your company's brand name with those pipelines. And the last piece, which we talked about, Cedric, is you need
00:22:50
Speaker
the individuals who are leading your inclusion work to have a seat at the table when it comes to products, services, your brand. From the very onset of whether it's a briefer campaign, it's a product idea. It's a technology. Whatever it is, they need to have a seat at the table because it's too late once everything's completed to retrofit.
00:23:17
Speaker
You see many of these cosmetics brands under fire, especially with the success that Rihanna had with Fenty in 2017, one of the first brands to include
00:23:30
Speaker
a very inclusive range of dark shades of foundation, not just one, not just two, a number of many. And $100 million, she said, they sold in 40 days. I was reading recently. $100 million, imagine, in 40 days. So the demand is there. You can't launch the shades and then, oh, you get blasted on Twitter. Let me add a few more.
00:23:53
Speaker
That's not how this works. And so that's why, principally, really thinking about how can you bring in the inclusion team, the DEI team, early on when you're ideating?
00:24:06
Speaker
on the business side. I want to unpack this real quick, because those are three great points there. And we work our way backwards to see to the table. I'm curious, with your experience being on the CPG side, understanding the structure internally, I'm curious about this question. When products are coming to market, so we see things that happen with H&M, have some situations happen. You have the Gucci and things like that. I'm curious, how many eyes does that product go through?
00:24:33
Speaker
How many people see it and have to approve it before it hits the shelf? I think it depends. I think if you're looking at very large brands, it's an ecosystem, especially when you're doing marketing in a large organization, you have agencies you work with. So it's easy in the case of, let's say, H&M.
00:24:49
Speaker
to blame the H&M marketer, but likely there was many people who might have seen that. I always thought to myself that it was probably one or two things. One is that there wasn't a lot of representation in the actual ecosystem, as you would say, or that there was representation in the ecosystem, but
00:25:13
Speaker
in some way silence and weren't able to give their input because of the repercussions or because of what could happen to them. Yeah. So I think you're absolutely right. I think there's probably three buckets this falls into. To your point, there is someone who says something and they're ignored. And I say to you, the whispers are the loudest. Listen to them. When there's a whisper about something,
00:25:36
Speaker
and you decide to ignore it, there's likely something there. If someone comes and says to you, I believe that this piece of content could be propagating colorism. I believe that this piece of content is perpetuating the stereotype that Black fathers are absent from their families as Burt's feed was recently under fire form.
00:25:58
Speaker
You know, stop and listen. I think that's like the whispers or the whispers should be the loudest. The second is if it's a broad ecosystem and people are in a rush and they're just on autopilot mode and they don't have the cultural competency, it's getting passed from one hand to another. And there's not thought leaders at the table, either representation from the team, but also from the team at the time.
00:26:21
Speaker
And then I think the final piece is people being scared and not knowing what to do, and it could just be one person who sees it. I think an example that I recently unpacked in an article I wrote for Entrepreneur was around the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Parade, where they applauded over Twitter the Diverse Dance Group.
00:26:47
Speaker
which was Zetify Beta, which is a Black sorority founded in 1920 at Howard University, incredible history and legacy, a part of the divine kind, and they were described as the diverse dance group. So Twitter goes wild and the tweet is deleted. No apology issued and then another tweet that accurately
00:27:17
Speaker
portrays the sorority and celebrates them. But that is an example of, to your point, that how do these things happen? It could just be that somebody was scared and didn't know what to do and just deleted it. Somebody didn't think it was a big deal and said, well, Twitter is going wild, but they'll move on to the next thing. And or they just didn't understand why it was so hurtful.
00:27:47
Speaker
to use that language. So I think there's many different reasons why these things happen.
00:27:53
Speaker
No, thanks for that. I was curious and I'm like, ah, this is probably the perfect time to ask this question.
CEO's Role in Diversity Initiatives
00:27:59
Speaker
And so when you mentioned the CEO piece and the chief diversity officer reporting into the CEO, that has been something to where I've worked consult with clients and I've seen a lot of changes in organizations to where you can start the process of devaluing the role of the diversity and inclusion officer.
00:28:17
Speaker
or diversity and inclusion leader within the organization. And when you was going through that, for me, when you think about diversity and inclusion, it, to a certain extent, almost always has to report to the CEO, even not if forever, but probably for a short amount of time.
00:28:32
Speaker
or some, like you said, dotted line to where you have that direct connection. Because the way that this role impacts the organization is in a horizontal way. It shoots across all organizations, from engineering to how you build products, to supply diversity, to all of these different things. And I remember a couple of years ago, I was listening to an interview by the then CEO of Pepsi. Indra, I think it's Nui?
00:28:57
Speaker
And I may have pronounced that wrong, but Indra, she was saying that she had a conversation with Steve Jobs. And he said that if you really, really, as a CEO, if you really, really care about something, whether it's design or whatever it is, that role has to report to you. If she was just going through and say, that person has to have direct connection to be able to know that what's coming from this individual, the mandate from the top to the organization,
00:29:23
Speaker
What this person is saying is the direction we're going, what we believe in. Even if not forever, for a short amount of time, it must have that connection. Not only so that they can go out and create and lead change, but that so the organization sees the importance from a visibility step. Absolutely. I would just echo one last thing to really hit this poem.
00:29:46
Speaker
is if you are the CEO and or you're in the C-suite and you don't know the name of the person who runs your DE&I agenda and you've never met with them, there it is. That's the problem, right? You don't know who this person is. And I think, Cedric, to your point, the utopia is that you don't need this work, that we all actually someday are our own inclusion officers, that you don't, to your point, that once you're making a lot of progress,
00:30:13
Speaker
you know, likely, maybe it doesn't report to the CEO anymore, reports to the CHRO, but it still needs that level of visibility and support. No, I agree. I agree. And as far as budget, I think that's simple. Cut the check.
00:30:29
Speaker
That's very simple. We can say that. Look, first of all, thanks for this conversation. I love just going through kind of your background, talking about chief diversity officers. And so as we kind of get towards this end, if you could only leave our audience with one action that would stick with them after this to this podcast that they can immediately go take action on, what would that action be?
Everyone's Role in D&I Efforts
00:30:52
Speaker
I would say that we are each our own chief diversity and community officers. I don't care where you sit in the organization, you have power to engage. If you are hiring someone on your team, ask for a diverse slate and go on LinkedIn and post. Start building your diverse networks so you can have access to great talent.
00:31:16
Speaker
If you are in a talent review where talent is being calibrated and you hear someone making a biased comment about me because I'm a new mom and I likely wouldn't be able to take a traveling assignment, be the person who can be my advocate and call out that bias with confidence and respect. And finally, Cedric
00:31:38
Speaker
We all have money. We all have some money. If you have money internally, if you are looking to make a video, or you're launching a big campaign, wherever you are in your journey in the organization, whatever you do, you can hire diverse suppliers. You can do it. You can ask about it. And you can do it in your personal life. You can support Black and Brown owned businesses, especially with the holidays coming up.
00:32:02
Speaker
No, I agree, I agree. Look, support. Black-owned businesses, diverse suppliers, and I would say this to organizations, large, small, medium, when you go out and you support, pay them what they're worth.
00:32:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Give them the deals that you would give any other organization with the terms, knowing that if it's a smaller business, 90, 120 net terms probably won't work. Think about the situation that you're coming into and who you're working with and give equitable terms when we go in and do business with each other.
00:32:33
Speaker
Awesome, awesome. Look, that is amazing. So I thank you, I thank you, I thank you for joining me today.
Conclusion and Future Connections
00:32:39
Speaker
This has been an amazing conversation. Before we go, do you have any shout outs, any parting words, and then also where can people find you if they would like to connect with you and hear more about your thoughts on this topic? Listen, Cedric, it's been an honor and a privilege to have this conversation with you. I really enjoyed it. And this is the power of LinkedIn since we connected in 2017. Yep.
00:33:00
Speaker
and years later I'm on your podcast. Please follow me on LinkedIn. Please let's continue the conversation. There's so much that we can be teaching and learning from each other. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, that does it. Look, thank you everyone for joining us for another episode of the 3D Podcast. This is Cedric and you've been talking and listening to Meeta, head of inclusion and equity and impact at Carter. We out.
00:33:25
Speaker
Awesome. Well, that does it for us. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the 3d podcast. If you would like to connect on social media, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook at Cedric and powers. And if you have any questions you'd like me to read or answer on the show, or just want to know more about my thoughts around diversity and inclusion, entrepreneurship, or just overall business, you can text me. Yes.
00:33:48
Speaker
I said, text me at 770-285-0404. You'll receive content straight to your phone on a regular basis, and you can message back and forth with me, not a bot or an assistant. All responses come directly from me. Well, look, this has been a great episode. Until next week, this has been Cedric Chambers, and you have been listening to the 3D Podcast. We out.