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Is Diversity and Inclusion Not Benefiting Women Of Color?
12 Plays2 years ago
This week, for episode 18 of “The 3D Podcast” me, Cedric Chambers sits down with an awesome diversity leader and person, Lani Hall. During this interview, Lani shared his thoughts about Diversity and Inclusion Not Benefiting Women Of Color. 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
00:00:03
Speaker
you
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey,
Introduction to 3D Podcast and Mission
00:00:11
Speaker
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
Guest Introduction: Lonnie Hall's Expertise
00:00:49
Speaker
you're ready, get your notepad out, pour you a drink, and let's dive deep as we discuss the dimensions of diversity.
00:01:03
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the 3D Podcast, where we speak to real practitioners that are making real change in a diversity, equity, and inclusion space. I'm excited for our show today as we are speaking to Lonnie Hall. Lonnie joins us with deep experience in diversity and inclusion, organizational development, and talent management. Lonnie spent 26 years at General Electric repeating her success in developing and implementing diversity and inclusion and talent strategy to help businesses improve performance at GE Energy and Power, GE Aviation,
00:01:33
Speaker
GE Capital and GE Appliances. Lonnie has held various HR roles of increasing responsibility, gaining broad experience as organization and talent leaders, global diversity and inclusion leader, executive human resources manager, and global diversity community engagement and early career talent leader.
00:01:50
Speaker
Lonnie graduated from GE's prestigious Human Resources Leadership Program and rose to the top 1% of GE employees. I'm excited being a fellow alumni of the GE HR LP program to have the discussion with Lonnie, and I hope you're excited too. So without further ado, let's get into the show.
00:02:07
Speaker
Just to start
Lonnie's Multicultural Journey and Career in Diversity
00:02:08
Speaker
off, could you share just a little bit about your background, kind of take us through your story a little bit, how you got into diversity and inclusion, how you got into the consulting space, just so that we kind of get the frame of reference as we go through this discussion and our listeners can really get to see who you are.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. And thank you so much for inviting me on this to have this very important discussion is, as you know about me, this is actually a labor of love. I'm a little bit about my background. I was actually born in Japan and I'm African-American. My father was in the military. And so I was born outside the country. I've lived on three continents and it really lived all over the world. And so from a personal standpoint, I've always had the opportunity to be around people that are different.
00:02:48
Speaker
where i was a unique person in the places where i was up from a professional level i really got involved in diversity inclusion when i joined general electric which i recently retired from a couple years ago and started a consulting practice and now gone back into the corporate world.
00:03:03
Speaker
But the opportunity that I had at GE to really be at the beginning of the journey of when we were starting ERGs and really expanding the story beyond traditional diversity and inclusion, but really thinking about diversity from the US standpoint, but also a global standpoint, because the company was very global, was where I got my start. And over the time, I had the wonderful opportunity of being the chief diversity officer for multiple businesses across multiple industries, in addition to other HR roles.
00:03:32
Speaker
To the benefit of the diversity strategy in the company, I was able to rise to the top 100% of 300,000 employees as an executive of the company. I got all of my learning and development from inside of GE. The benefit of that was because GE was considered to be a standard bearer,
00:03:51
Speaker
and really the best practice for all things diversity. I got an opportunity to talk with at least a hundred companies over my 26 year career. So once I retired in the beginning of 2018, a number of those people came back and said, hey, we hear you're going to retire. Would you be interested in doing a project for us now that you no longer work at GE?
00:04:10
Speaker
And I always knew that that's what I wanted to do in retirement. And so I started a consulting company. And of course, it was very busy during the time. It got even busier post a George Floyd incident. So I was working for small, medium, and large size businesses on diversity and inclusion initiatives. And I got a call where I thought they were asking me to do some consulting work because that's what I had been doing. And they actually were calling because they wanted to fill a role. And that's how I ended up in the role that I've been in now for about five months with J.M. Huber.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so it's an exciting opportunity to be here at a time when the history outside the company is very forefront in racial justice and systematic racism and all the things we're seeing. And so it's gone full circle from me being in Japan to me being here at this point in time and being able to take my personal story and my personal learnings and my professional learnings and blended into having this discussion today.
00:05:00
Speaker
No, that's awesome. I mean, Japan, three continents.
Empathy Through Diverse Experiences
00:05:03
Speaker
That's amazing. Let me ask you this. Knowing that you have that background, you've lived in these different places and also lived in the US. What do you see as your biggest learnings of some of the things that shaped you during that process of living in these different places to now in who you are today?
00:05:20
Speaker
I think it shapes you whenever you have an opportunity to have different experiences because that's what diversity and inclusion is about. And so you exercise this muscle where you actually become a little bit more culturally aware and culturally competent because you learn and live in those spaces and you get to understand if you are open to it, you really get to understand life and values and customs and norms that are different in other places of the world. And so you learn about that and you lean into that.
00:05:48
Speaker
And so being a child, it was very easy to lean into being the only African-American family living in this little German village where we have five girls at the time and the family living there.
00:05:58
Speaker
And that shape then, when I go to a place and I'm the only African American, I don't necessarily feel so subconscious because I've been that person many, many times in my life. I think that many people, if they took the opportunity to really go away from the fear and really get to know people, I think it shapes your ability to listen and hear and then develop a measure of empathy around those individuals. But we tend to fear what we don't know.
00:06:23
Speaker
And I think that drives a lot of the challenges and problems that we're having is because we're not having enough of those experiences with people to give us a different framework and the lens with which to look and interact with them. Nice, nice. I kind of feel the same way just living. I believe we've lived in four or five different states and did a lot of moving as well. And just to be able to bring in all different experiences and then come back to where, you know, in Georgia, where I'm from, it allows me to look at the world differently and allows me to look and experience certain things differently.
00:06:53
Speaker
being in places to where I was probably the only minority, only black person. I've even had it to where we lived in a town to where it's probably less than five black people. And so, you know, having those experiences and being able to kind of navigate through that I think are very, very important.
Impact of D&I on Women of Color
00:07:06
Speaker
And so, as we kick off the discussion today, we're talking about DNI programs and their impact as it relates to women of color. And, you know, I'm excited to start the podcast off and to show off by, you know, talking about, you know, recently in the news, we've had Roslyn Brewer,
00:07:22
Speaker
who one has been a mover and shaker in her career has been doing a lot of things currently she's the chief operating officer at starbucks but recently just took the role of ceo of walgreens which will now make her the first and without first but the only
00:07:38
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African-American woman, currently CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And so, you know, knowing that and kind of knowing the topic today and you're here at news, kind of give me your thoughts on, you know, rising, getting into this role and kind of just overall, you know, discussion that you've had and what does this mean?
00:07:55
Speaker
I think it's phenomenal. I mean, go back to the historic election that we've had with Kamala, who, by the way, went to Howard University, my school. And so incredibly proud, but it's a testament to all of the hard work of all the African-American women and all the other people who have gone before them, who we all, and they all stand on the shoulders of, and they would all tell you the exact same thing. I think the benefit of having the role models and have individuals see
00:08:23
Speaker
Not only for African Americans, for other people who don't have an opportunity to have a daily interaction or interaction at all, they get an opportunity to see people doing things differently than what they might traditionally have been exposed to. And that's critically important. I know sometimes on LinkedIn, I saw a lot of people are posting the Rosalind Brewer story on their LinkedIn pages. It's the first of this, and there was another woman today. She's the first PhD in nuclear engineering.
00:08:48
Speaker
And a lot of times people in the comments say, why do you keep bringing up race and why do you have to say she's black and why do you have to say she's a woman? And I think that's coming from a perspective of not understanding history and not understanding the importance of being able to have role models and to celebrate those role models. It's not negating or taking it away because they are something that's not the norm of what people are used to seeing is quite the contrary. I think sometimes people think that diversity is about
00:09:15
Speaker
squashing the differences and not ever talking about color and never talking about gender and race, but it's just actually the opposite. It's inclusion. It's leveraging that and bringing that story in. And it's okay to have that conversation and be able to talk about it. And I think, you know, sometimes we think that we talk about it, then that means we're dividing people. And I think it's quite frankly the opposite. If we're talking about it and learning about it and experiencing it, we can leverage it to be better people.
00:09:42
Speaker
No, I agree. And you talked about the historical piece there. And so just kind of taking this into a little bit deeper conversation here. When it comes to D&I initiatives, and we still see where you have some companies who have done well or excel, I would say, but it's kind of not the norm. And
Intersectionality in D&I Initiatives
00:10:01
Speaker
so when it comes to D&I initiatives, and we think about minorities, and specifically, in this case, women of color overall,
00:10:08
Speaker
Who has benefited the most from the DNI initiatives, if you think about the last 15, 20, even 25, 30 years, and why to help frame the reference of where we are today?
00:10:19
Speaker
I would say the data would show you it's definitely been white women as expected, and I'll tell you why it's as expected. Then I would also say, in the higher ranks, probably people that are Indian immigrants is what I would say. If you look at who's at the top of many of these companies, and I don't think it's by accident. By nature, people have had more exposure. If I'm a person at the top of a company, as we see from the data, it's typically white male.
00:10:45
Speaker
typically the closest person to them would have been their mother or another white female. So it's not uncommon that because I have those experiences, I'm more likely to choose a person because I have a certain bias toward something favorably because that's what I'm exposed to. And that would happen with any of us. If you're exposed to something very favorably a lot,
00:11:05
Speaker
And it influences your ability to make decisions consciously and unconsciously. And I think that's what happens. So it's not a surprise that that's who's benefited the most because the people that are making decisions are are really making decisions based upon familiarity and comfort. And so that then allows them an opportunity to see that person more. A long time ago, our chairman at GE at the time, Jeff Immelt,
00:11:27
Speaker
talked about these things called rings of familiarity. He said, as a white guy, the most familiar person in my circle in my ring is going to be a white woman, then it's probably going to be a man, and then it's probably going to be a man of color because I was an athlete. The person in my furthest ring for myself personally is going to be an African-American woman. I think that's what we see in corporate America. He wasn't making a negative statement, he was making quite a positive statement to say, and so I make an effort to go to my furthest ring,
00:11:55
Speaker
to get to know those individuals because I'm not going to naturally be able to do that in the spaces that I operate in. And so I think the reason you see that African-American women and other women of color have not progressed is because we're not inside of this circle close enough to the rings of familiarity so that people can be comfortable with you, to understand you, to learn you, and to be close enough to grow and develop you. And I think you see that quite happen very often. And I think what we have to do
00:12:23
Speaker
Is in those programs deliberately look for women of color and ask ourselves the questions are we developing them at the same rate that we're developing other people in the organization we have to really be highlighting talent in that way because we're not gonna naturally.
00:12:39
Speaker
The decision makers are gonna naturally see them they can be performing great performing well and be in great opportunities but someone has to see you and they have to see your performance in order to make a go or no go decision about where you go up the career ladder in an organization or you know in a group.
00:12:56
Speaker
No, that that that's a very interesting comment. And so just to stay there for a second, we think about development. And so, you know, when we think about progression into roles, right. So when we think about Ross and Brewer and everything that she's doing, have done it up to the point to now taking on the role at Walgreens.
00:13:14
Speaker
When we look at women of color, so why aren't women of color progressing into those VP, SVP, C-suite roles?
Talent Gaps for Women of Color
00:13:23
Speaker
And I want to note that there's been some recent studies out by McKinsey and Lehman that says that from progression for women of color, you have 6%, 5%, 3% respectively for VP, SVP, C-suite. And so what can we do to increase these numbers, one from a talent development perspective,
00:13:45
Speaker
But then too, when we look at what's happening inside of these DNR programs that are actually holding women back and how can we make sure that we're not, you know, implementing those different systems, systemic systems to prevent women of color from moving forward.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of the same thing. So I've done consulting with at least 100 companies of all any company that you've talked to out there. I've been doing some consulting work with them or sharing some best practices at one point and also getting into learn what they do. And what we find is typically when you're doing talent development and you use a definition, you say,
00:14:21
Speaker
Diverse or you say women if you don't look at the intersectionality of not just women But African American women Hispanic women Asian women native native indigenous If you don't look at people in that way and really bifurcate your data You're gonna lump everyone in and not really see that you have challenges in those areas
00:14:42
Speaker
And so I think going forward, it has to be a conscious decision by organizations to not just look at women, but really bifurcate the data and really get granular on which women.
00:14:54
Speaker
There's some other data that came out as well that I think the Catalyst organization had done that talked about women are not less, African-American are not less ambitious. And all the data says, quite frankly, African-American women are more ambitious than most other women. You wouldn't know that from who you see progressing in organizations. And so I challenge organizations to go back and really don't just look at women
00:15:16
Speaker
but look at the intersectionality of women in the organization and not just put them all into one lump. Because if you do that, you might get some flawed data where you say, well, we're 75% women. Well, you might be 75% women or 30% women, but if you only have one African-American female and one Asian,
00:15:34
Speaker
you're missing the boat on the talent that's available and out there. So you have to go back to yourself and say, okay, what are we missing about that? And that not only goes for those C-suite positions, but also for board positions, the exact same thing. If you're looking in your search and you say, I'm looking for women, you need to specifically say, I'm looking for X women and really be specific to the companies that are helping you source data about what you're looking for. You have to ask for it. No, I agree. And so I guess the question is why, like, why do you feel, or why do you think that
00:16:04
Speaker
It is like when you hear about, even if it's ERG groups, it's like the women's network. It's not anything that digs deeper into those different intersectionalities. Why is that the case? I've heard of some notions that if women win, then women of color, you win in two. But when that's not the case, especially when you look at salary data,
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, because I think what we're doing, we're finally getting to the point where it's being called out. It's being, we have more data. So long ago, we didn't have people working in these data roles. I got a great friend named Serena and she works at Kraft and we've got lots of people out there that are data people, Nick Garbus, but these people are that understand data and able to look at it and use data to drive decisions. So if you only look at women,
00:16:51
Speaker
you don't know that you have the problem. I mean, you're talking about big and large organizations. People aren't seeing people in the hallways even now anymore because of COVID, but because they don't have exposure to these individuals, and many times some women are in roles and positions that are not geared to the C-suite organization. They're in roles that are not line roles, that are not operating roles, so they're not getting the experiences that allow them the opportunity to be able to be seen and evaluated.
00:17:17
Speaker
So you know women don't get an opportunity to those women won't get it for all women. It's a problem But then those women are not able to be seen by the organization So when they're doing a talent review in the business and saying who's our talent?
00:17:31
Speaker
there has to be someone in the room to say, I noticed that there are no X on this list. It seems like it's a really obvious thing to do, but it isn't obvious. I've been in rooms and numbers of times I've seen numbers of lists. And I said, did anyone notice there were no African Americans in this video? Did anyone notice that there were no women in the video? Or did anyone notice that there were women, but none of the women were talking.
Recognizing Underrepresented Groups in Talent Reviews
00:17:54
Speaker
They didn't have a speaking role.
00:17:56
Speaker
And because of your experiences and because of how you learn and because of what you experience, you may not notice that. It's not a fault or anything that you have, but you just don't notice that. You don't see it. And if the person is open, they will say, Oh, I'm glad you bought that outline. I didn't even realize that the women were in the video. I didn't realize none of them were talking. Okay. I see what you mean. Let me try to fix that. Let's see what we can do. Or I realized we didn't have any women nominated to be on this special committee. Let me go back and look.
00:18:25
Speaker
You might be grabbing the data from different people in the organization. They can't see the total list, but if I'm in a position where I can see all the nominations coming in for an award, I should notice as a leader in the organization, and I have to be trained as a leader, or we have to have some processes that automatically ask the question, who's missing? Who's missing from this list? Do we have appropriate representation? And if we don't, we need to then back ourselves up and say, why is that? And what are we going to do to make sure that that does not happen again?
00:18:54
Speaker
I agree. And I'm actually just question, you know, touching on a little bit of that is that, you know, when you think about development, when you think about putting women of color in roles to make sure that that, you know, they can one get the exposure and put them in these growth opportunities, when it comes to the actual leaders, right, that are, you know, head those organizations, which a lot of cases aren't minorities, you know, predominantly white,
00:19:18
Speaker
I've had conversations in the past with leaders or with individuals, women of color, to where they struggle to get feedback. When they do get feedback, they'll get feedback from another leader in the organization that is black or a person that's diverse because their direct manager didn't feel comfortable giving them the feedback who was white. And so when you have those types of situations, one, it takes a long time for that feedback loop to come around.
00:19:46
Speaker
But then, you know, and that person could have done the same thing over and multiple times and it could have been detrimental to their career. But when you have, when you see that, one, have you seen it? And two, if you've seen it, how do you help leaders navigate through that space? Because that feedback is important and we want to make sure that we're not losing that because we, you know, feel uncomfortable having the conversations.
Challenges in Providing Feedback to Minorities
00:20:08
Speaker
That is such an important conversation to have.
00:20:11
Speaker
that happens often. It's not just women of color or people of color. We see gender differences. We had done a study not too long ago where we looked at gender differences and men told us they are uncomfortable telling women feedback because they're afraid they're gonna cry. And they themselves are not trained that crying is okay. So if a person in the, they assume that a woman is gonna cry because the women they've been exposed to when they had a discussion with them cried,
00:20:40
Speaker
And so they assume the woman might cry if they have to tell them something tough. It's also a managerial issue because some leaders do not like to give feedback to men or women. So it's not even gender. They just don't like, most managers are not trained to deliver negative news. Everybody wants to deliver positive news. Nobody wants to go deliver negative news. Then they consider it to be negative instead of developmental. So it causes a limitation. Add on to that, the cultural differences of what I may or may not know
00:21:07
Speaker
And I'm conjuring up in my head what might happen. And so I just don't give the feedback. And then it becomes career limiting for the person because they're not getting actionable feedback. So I've coached many leaders about how to give feedback to a person and not just how to give a feedback to an African-American, but how to give feedback to anybody that has the right information and has the right level of data and examples so that the person can make an actionable plan that you both can have a commitment to seeing that development happen.
00:21:33
Speaker
So that's a big issue. Lots of companies and lots of people will tell you they do struggle with giving feedback negative, but even if it's someone that's different, they are not sure, especially African-American women. They have this, you know, there's a stereotype that's out there that we have to face into that African-American women are going to be that angry black woman that they see on a television show or African-American men are going to be the angry black men that they see.
00:21:59
Speaker
in some situation. And so people don't have enough exposure to know that those are stereotypes, even though if they haven't faced them, they see them and that's gotten to their psyche and to their subconscious. And that then makes them behave differently when it comes to giving the feedback. So we as HR leaders and other professionals who have competencies in this area and as leaders have to coach leaders about how to get over that and have to practice and role play and show them how it's done.
00:22:23
Speaker
No, I agree. I agree. Look, being inside of, as you know, GE and not being inside of GE and looking at other organizations. And we talk about not being coached to deliver feedback. To be honest, most managers aren't coached to be managers or leaders, we could say, right? It's almost like you've done a great job to the roles.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, we had a great discussion with the Women's Network. We've had this evolving discussion we were having about when you have these women organizations not letting men be included, not been a proponent of having men included in these organizations. It's a both and strategy. You have things that you do with just women, but you need a both and because 90% of companies are run by men, women are going to be getting promoted by men until something changes. Therefore, you need to bring men into the
00:23:10
Speaker
into the discussions and to learn and to listen and to share so they can grow and develop and exercise their muscle. Because if you keep people separated, they're never going to have an opportunity to really hear the stories and hear what they can do differently. You have a lot of men who are more than happy to do this. Someone asked me on a panel recently,
00:23:29
Speaker
Do I think that the Me Too movement caused men to not want to be alone with women in the room? And I said, quite frankly, any man that tells me that because of Me Too, he no longer wants to be in the room with women, he had a problem before Me Too. So that should not be an issue. What you should be doing is looking at your skill and ability to coach.
00:23:48
Speaker
to provide feedback, to manage to lead any of your talent. I do think that we do have to think about how we're teaching men in some spaces, especially technical men. So if you're a technical man sometimes, and this is not everyone, so I don't want people to call you and say, you said this was everyone. It's not everyone. But what I am saying is even for technical men who might even be more technical, we found in the data
00:24:13
Speaker
that technical men even had a harder time doing this because they weren't in school to study how to be a manager. They were in school and how to be the technologist that they are. Now they become a manager. And so there's a skill gap between managing people and giving feedback because that's not how they were developed when they were in school.
00:24:31
Speaker
I agree, I agree. Being an HR leader for technology, a lot of the technology leads out was very, very technical. The only reason they really wanted to manage was to control the resources on their projects. It wasn't even about management. It was just, I know I can have these resources. So when you think about that, that next level of
00:24:49
Speaker
how to lead, how to have conversations, how to go down these paths and really grow a team is just not there. As we look, just kind of coming to the end here, just a couple of last questions I want to ask. One, as it relates to, we've broken down the overall bucket women of color into it, just say women.
White Women as Allies for Women of Color
00:25:07
Speaker
But when it comes to divining down, you say white women versus women of color or
00:25:12
Speaker
What can white women do in this process to help women of color as they navigate through organizations that they navigate through their careers? Some people say be an ally. I said, nope. They said some people say be an advocate. I said, nope. You need to be an agitator. I like that. No more ally. No more advocate. You need to agitate. You need to, when you're sitting in the room, say, what about that talent? You need to agitate and ask the questions and pointedly say,
00:25:38
Speaker
I am talking about women of color. I am talking about African-American women. I'm talking about Hispanic women. You have to bring it up. That is a responsibility, I think, of white women who have a seat at the table to be able to say that and do that. They have to consciously make a conscious decision to agitate. I love that word, agitate. I'm gonna start using that. When it comes to kind of the last piece here, if we think about listeners, they're hearing this discussion and they're trying to see, you know, a lot of things that we spoke about,
Actions for Success of Women of Color
00:26:07
Speaker
can they take back and start to put into action tomorrow at their organizations? Understanding that, what are three actions that either leaders or organizations can take to improve the success of women of color in their organizations? In the development plan, when I'm doing my consulting and even in my day job, the first thing you need to do is you need to sit down and have what are called get to know discussions of your talent. You can't promote people you don't know.
00:26:33
Speaker
So there's a formatting structure you can use called the get to know. Sometimes they're called stay interviews, but sit down and get to know your talent, get to know their skills, their hopes, their dreams, abilities, what they're doing in terms of development, help sit with the organization, determine whether the destination roles they have the capability to go to and develop them.
00:26:51
Speaker
So once you get to know them, you can determine whether or not they need continued mentoring or they need sponsorship. Mentoring would be a first step. Sponsoring would be the next step. Eventually, you want to get to the point where the people whose opinions matter know this talent and the people whose opinions matter that can make a go or no-go decision that sponsorship. And so you want to make sure you get individuals from known
00:27:14
Speaker
sponsorship and you're putting those formal process in place where you're either quarterly or once a year or twice or however often you need to do it to go back and check on fully functioning development plans on people that you think have the capacity to be in the organization at a higher level and make it a routine operating review and an operating structure just like you do anything else. Financial meetings, you should be having talent reviews.
00:27:41
Speaker
If you have an ops review, you should have an operating talent review to talk about that talent. So those are things that you can do.
00:27:47
Speaker
get to know them, you can mentor them and then you can sponsor them and you can have regular talent reviews to talk and review where that talent is. No, awesome. Awesome. I like that. I like it. And so, you know, this has been an amazing conversation. Look, before we go, do you have any shout outs, any parting words? And then also,
Engagement and Resources for Further Discussion
00:28:03
Speaker
you know, if people want to, you know, get to know you more and dig into kind of your, your thoughts and your practice, where can people find you or they would like to connect with you?
00:28:13
Speaker
They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm there. I have been putting a lot of posts up lately because I've been so busy with so many other things, but I always forward stories.
00:28:22
Speaker
and content that I think is something that I want people to pay attention to. And I'll put a note and say, hey, here's a great job opportunity for a great leader that I work with. And these are all going to be personal people that I know are talented, that I think people should look at their opportunities for. And then if I think there's some rich content from a development, I posted one today about how with the GE history in Africa is a lesson to all companies about how
00:28:45
Speaker
Employee resource groups ERGs can help fuel the business GE is over five billion dollar business in Africa Africa Because of the GE ERG the African American form so I'll put content out there like that But if you follow me on LinkedIn and reach out to me, I'm more than happy and
00:29:01
Speaker
And then if they're companies that you need to do work with and you want to work in this diversity space, I can give you a referral of some great consulting companies that do the same work that I do that I've worked with myself that can help you shape and inform you about these topics and areas. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Lani, I want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:29:19
Speaker
for joining us today on the 3D podcast. Look, I wish you much, much success in your future endeavors. And I can't wait for the listeners to his episode and to get the feedback.
00:29:29
Speaker
I hope you have a great one and we'll talk soon. And thank you, Cedric. This was such an enjoyable discussion and I'm happy to talk to you anytime, of course, and catch up. Oh, that's always great. Have a great one. You too.
00:29:40
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. I said text me at 770-285-0404.
00:30:09
Speaker
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. But 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.