There are many paths to working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and we love Bernadette Smiths.
Before "bringing good vibes to DEI" she was a wedding planner for same-sex marriages. She has always been out there working on inclusion.
Today, Bernadette is the CEO of the Equality Institute where she takes a holistic approach to create meaningful DEI work. In her book "Inclusive 360," Bernadette arms us with strategies to foster an environment where everyone feels valued.
If you're keen on creating change, creating inclusive cultures, and celebrate every small win along the way, this episode is for you.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
There are many paths to working in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and we love Bernadette Smiths.
Before "bringing good vibes to DEI" she was a wedding planner for same-sex marriages. She has always been out there working on inclusion.
Today, Bernadette is the CEO of the Equality Institute where she takes a holistic approach to create meaningful DEI work. In her book "Inclusive 360," Bernadette arms us with strategies to foster an environment where everyone feels valued.
If you're keen on creating change, creating inclusive cultures, and celebrate every small win along the way, this episode is for you.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
This week on A Dog Called Diversity. I have an incredible woman. Her name is Bernadette Smith and she's the CEO of the Equality Institute. Welcome to the podcast, bernadette.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Lisa. It is my pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:
You know what I love about podcasting, first, is I get selfishly, get to pick the brains of incredible people from around the world and, secondly, talk to people all around the world. So you are joining us from Chicago, is that correct?
Speaker 2:
Yes, chicago Illinois, usa, woohoo, yes, love it, we're here. Yeah, so we're far away from each other, but, yeah, I've really enjoyed every conversation we've had and I'm excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, same. You end up feeling like you've got friends all over the world, don't you?
Speaker 2:
Exactly yeah, it is super cool.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, tell me about the work you do at the Equality Institute.
Speaker 2:
So I'm a keynote speaker and a writer, and Equality Institute is my company and what we do is we help organizations embed equity and inclusion into their functions. So we're essentially a small diversity equity and inclusion consulting firm. I have a consultant on the team, I have a few facilitators on my bench, and so we're sort of doing our thing building this business, to empower organizations, to partner with them, to make equity and inclusion the default.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that and not dissimilar to the work that I do, so it's always great to meet other practitioners making a difference in their part of the world. I want to talk a bit more about some of the work you do and some of your views on this work, but you have such an interesting career and have done some really cool things, so I wondered if you would talk a little bit about, maybe, the journey to having your own DEI consulting business. So what were some of the things you did along the way before then?
Speaker 2:
Yeah Well, my first business I started in 2004 when I was living in Boston, massachusetts, and Massachusetts was the first state in the US to have marriage equality for same sex couples. So I had been planning events for a nonprofit and I had been going to the state house because they were trying to change the constitution to ban marriage equality. But I saw all of these couples fighting for their rights and I was like, oh my gosh, this is definitely going to go through. Someone's got to plan those weddings and it's going to be me. So I decided, basically right there on the state house steps, to start a business specializing in basically being an activist wedding planner to help these couples navigate a very traditional industry. And so I did that for a while.
Speaker 2:
And as time went on, I started reaching out and connecting with folks in the wedding industry and helping them better understand LGBTQ inclusion, and I knew that I could have my message be broader than just the couples that I was working with, but that I could impact the industry as well.
Speaker 2:
And as time went on, I also moved to New York City and started planning very high end weddings there, and I really also lost my sense of purpose in that work.
Speaker 2:
You know, when you're planning six figure weddings and they don't really care whether or not you know it's there's anything unique or there's nothing, it just starts to feel taken for granted the rights taken for granted, and I just started to lose my sense of purpose and so eventually I got divorced. So my own marriage fell apart. You know, I had a started to evolve my business away from weddings and I essentially phased out that part of my career and evolved my speaking and training business away from weddings and away from LGBTQ inclusion into diversity, equity and inclusion more broadly. So that's sort of been my evolution. I will tell you that that's ugly in between phase, between weddings, and where I am now was kind of ugly and lasted a few years and you know that's very awkward. You know that awkward growing pain. But I, you know I had to reinvent myself and really reintroduce myself to an entirely different network.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. Had you ever run an event or organized a wedding before you decided to be a wedding event organizer?
Speaker 2:
No, I never organized a wedding. It was just events like conferences and meetings and stuff like that. So, a I had to learn how to be a wedding planner and B that I had to unlearn because gay couples were doing things differently. So I had to sort of like unlearn and reinvent, and so that was kind of a really cool experience. But one thing that was interesting to kind of figure out in hindsight is that I never because I didn't know it when I was in it but I never truly felt authentic in that work, sometimes when I was working with my clients, but you know, at the end of the day I didn't really care about weddings, I didn't care about the linens, I didn't care about the lighting, the stationery. I was kind of a waste of money.
Speaker 2:
I did and I didn't right, but I didn't have that deep sense of passion that a lot of people did, and so I was inauthentic. I was kind of a fake a little bit. I just wasn't truly living my purpose in that work. And now that I am, I can sort of see it. I can see it from back, from, you know in hindsight, but yeah, it's all kind of you know, the personal evolution and the professional evolution. Intertwined.
Speaker 1:
I like that it reminds me a bit about in working in human resources or people in culture, in organizations. So helping gay couples get married, I mean that is a beautiful thing, particularly when legislation has just changed and when there are people working against that legislation to undo it, and so to help people access something in society that heterosexual people have is a really, really beautiful thing, right? So I kind of get your purpose. But the reality of organizing weddings I think sometimes that that purpose gets lost from it because it does become about the linen and the flowers and the fights over who's getting invited and where people are sitting on tables and in a six-figure wedding I think that's even worse somehow.
Speaker 1:
But you know, lots of people go and work in human resources because they want to make organizations better places, and I think sometimes the reality is you just get to work for the business and do what people want you to do, which may not be caring for the people who actually work for it. Yeah, and I brought that up because in DEI work, often companies will start with training and so they might do some unconscious bias training or they might do some inclusive leadership training with their leaders, and then they go. Oh, we tried that and it didn't work, so we're not going to do any of that anymore. But I know that you take a much more holistic approach to DEI work and I wondered if you would talk a bit about that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, in my research what I've found is that the organizations that have advanced the most in DEI have three very strong components, which I call PSA. The first is a very strong sense of purpose, a people driven purpose that everyone can rally behind. The second is the S and that's the strategy. But it's got to be a holistic strategy, touching all of the different functions of the organization. It can't just be an HR strategy. So it's S is strategy and it's got to be holistic. And then the A is accountability. There has to be accountability for metrics. Leaders should absolutely be held accountable, but a lot of the best leading organizations every employee is somehow held to DEI standards as well. So purpose plus strategy plus accountability is really the formula that I like to use to showcase the organizations that are doing the best work.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that. So what are some of the things? When you, when you go into organizations, where do you start with them? If they come to you and say, bernadette, I want some unconscious bias training, and you go hold on like, where do you start with them?
Speaker 2:
You know, I'll be honest, I wish that I had more control over that. You know, sometimes we're just being reactive and they're saying, hey, we want a workshop series and that's it. Sorry, you can try to sell us something else, but nope, all we want is a workshop, you know. And so sometimes that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:
But in a perfect world, when we are just getting to know an organization and they want us to be fully involved, then we're looking, we do, we conduct what's called the inclusive 360 assessment, which is based on the name of my book. It's based on this, this app, this tool we had custom built and it essentially is looking at gaps for equity and inclusion across 16 different organizational functions. And so we're looking at things like pay, we're looking at supplier diversity, we're looking at marketing and product development and customer service training and we're looking at different elements of HR, like recruiting, but also performance management and onboarding and all of the different benefits you know. So we're looking at all of these different functions for these specific gaps, and when we do that, we can get a really strong sense of where the opportunities are and then we can start to make targeted interventions and recommendations. So we really have to assess the current state in order to really know where we need to go.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, have you, or where have you, had success with that approach and have you been able to, I guess, demonstrate organizations who've been able to move forward with this work?
Speaker 2:
Oh, this is such a hard. You would think this would be an easy question. I know, right, you know we have no, no, no it's. You know it's it's hard because we have clients who are going through it, but you know they're just, they're in the middle of it and it's still messy and we don't have all you know, so it's I can't say, yeah, that this is, this is the best case study. We're not there yet.
Speaker 2:
You know this, this work, this approach that we're doing now, we started in earnest about a year and a half ago. Prior to that and prior to developing this approach, we were fired from two different consulting projects because our approach was kind of vague, you know, not super specific. You know, and that's kind of how a lot of DEI is kind of vague hey, diversify your talent pipeline, well, how do you do that? You know that's not really a helpful recommendation, and so what we have got come from is super specificity. So we're looking to deliver action items and recommendations that are so specific and tell you how to do this, to remove the excuse of not doing it. So that's our approach. And, yeah, we're still in the messy middle. So I can't say, hey, you know, we have these studies yet, but they're coming.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that you talk about being super specific about what organizations need to do, because I think there's two types of organizations I come across and one is the ones who go. We just want to be seen to be doing something, and usually it doesn't matter what it is. I will do some training, or we'll do we'll do lots of events for Pride Month, or we'll do a big marketing play around International Women's Day. So you know, there's that group. And then there's the group who actually committed you know a purpose and people driven, like you talked about, and just want to be led and just want to be advised. And I think that super specific approach would be really great for those organizations because they can go. You know we have this much capacity this year. We want to work on our diverse talent pipeline, so tell us how to do that and we will do it. And then they might want to do one other thing and I think that's a really helpful approach for those organizations, that, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think so, and you know, here's the thing is that we're when we're, when we're spreading out the responsibility of DEI, when it becomes part of everyone's job and it becomes a lens that applies to all different kinds of decision making, we can start to get some really small wins, and then we celebrate the wins and the different functions and we just keep going, and really I think that that's going to be important as well, to make sure that we do more of what's working. You know, that's my thing is celebrate what's working and do more of that, because I think that it can be discouraging for folks who aren't, who feel like, oh, we're not moving fast enough. And then, of course, there are the people who are the DEI resistors, and so you know, the people who are actually doing the work sometimes feel like they can't ever win because they're getting at getting it from both sides. So we really want to make sure we celebrate those wins.
Speaker 1:
Yep, yep, I so agree. You've got to celebrate your progress, or it's just emotional and sometimes soul destroying work inside organizations. Yeah, having been there, one of the things I wanted to talk about is when I was in a D&I role, I was within the HR function. I was part of the talent function in the organization I worked in and I have a really strong HR background and I thought, going into that role when I was new, that having that HR background would be really helpful, because I understand the talent processes. I understand how we recruit people into the business. I understand how we identify successes for roles and talent that we want to retain in the organization.
Speaker 1:
I know how we pay people. I know about the gender pay gap that exists. I know how to develop. I know all the big processes that happen around people in organizations basically. So I mean a great background, right. And then there were times in my role where the budget was sort of hard to access. Even though I had it in part of my role, I couldn't access senior leaders. I struggled to get things done and I could see people outside of the HR function getting stuff done in D&I. I could see our employee resource groups make progress and get things done because they didn't have the constraints of the HR background. If that makes sense and I know you have a view on this and I wondered if you'd talk a bit about you know where should DEI roles sit? And often they're our clients, aren't they?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest right now, a lot of our clients DEI sits in HR, and the problem with that, though, is that that budget is not always protected.
Speaker 2:
So, just a couple of years ago, we are a client did not renew their contract with us because they said, you know, they don't have a protected DEI budget. It's about prioritizing employee salaries, and I get that, but when DEI sits outside of HR and it becomes part of everyone's responsibility and the reporting goes to the COO or the CEO or somewhere on the executive leadership team, when we're thinking about DEI separately across all business functions, then we're probably going to have a different type of budget conversation we're about. We can have influence in different ways across all the other functions. So it just makes a lot more sense if we're trying to actually get stuff done. You know, if you're looking to be performative and you just sort of want to throw up another diversity, training or act like you're doing the right thing, sure, fine, put it in HR. But if you actually want to make real progress and you want to take this seriously, then it's time to change the reporting structure.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, are you working with anyone who reports outside of the HR function?
Speaker 2:
No, not on, not with our consulting clients, with workshops, yes.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Okay, Okay. A lot of DEI work had urgency in 2020 because we had George Floyd's murder, we had a pandemic, and so we saw lots of organisations scrambling to do this work. We're now four years later. How have you seen the work change or the focus of the work change?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is changing. I was talking to a friend in the US state of Texas who said that they don't use the word DEI anymore.
Speaker 2:
Stuffed out a long time ago, so part of how it's changing depends on where you live. Here in Chicago, I feel like DEI is alive and well, so there's that sort of fragmented piece here in our country. What I will say, though, is that the most successful companies, the Fortune 1000 and beyond, know that they cannot get away with not having DEI, so they're doing their thing, and anyone else is truly going to be left behind. So it's just, it's a business imperative, to be honest, so I don't really think it's going anywhere. I think that the media has it overblown. I think that it's shifting away from hiring targets or diversity quotas, which we're not saying, but hiring targets pledges that were made specifically around representation numbers. I think that's shifting, and so that they don't get accused of being reverse discriminatory, but I think that what there's a lot more focus on now is inclusion and making sure that employees have a good experience, and that's still happening, or at least that's still. I think that's sort of shifted as the goal.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I wanted to ask what you're optimistic about and because you have this really cool thing you do on Monday mornings in the US, which is good vibes in DEI, where you talk to people about good things that have happened around the world in this space and there are good stories out there. What are you optimistic about with this work?
Speaker 2:
I am irrationally optimistic sometimes, let's be honest. But here's the thing I'm optimistic because I get to talk to great people every day. Great people have really good intentions and are just trying to figure out how they can do a little bit better. And if I can help them do a little bit better, then we're all winning and there's a ripple effect and it multiplies. And so I know that, I see it, I have those conversations, and so that gives me hope. And also I have a lot of optimism because of I know the demographics here in the US. I know that DEI is an inevitability, so I just know that it's here and my message I'm hopeful that all of this is just we're moving towards progress. I don't know, I just feel, like I said, irrationally optimistic sometimes.
Speaker 1:
I love that Irrationally optimistic because it must feel like a tug of war in the US some days where you've got different states moving in different directions and pieces of legislation going sometimes in a good direction, sometimes not so much. Yeah, that must be challenging.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is, but it's my, it's my mission, it's my purpose to spread the good news, right? And so I do that in my newsletter that goes out on Saturday mornings and I do it in the podcast that you were a guest on. And so, yeah, celebrating what's working and how can we do more of that, and because I have this sort of discipline about writing the five things newsletter and finding five stories every week that celebrate what's working sort of keeps me in this optimistic mindset because I have to find the stories. It's like part of my brand. I share these files, gosh, where I need another story sometimes, and that's how it goes, but it just keeps me in that mindset.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, cool. How can people get on your newsletter and watch your good vibes in DEI?
Speaker 2:
The best way to get on my newsletter is to go to fivethingsdeicom and you can subscribe there, and at the bottom of that page you can also learn more about the podcast, which is called Five Things in 15 Minutes, and you can find it on any podcast platform if you search by Five Things in 15 Minutes or Good Vibes in DEI. Good Vibes in DEI.
Speaker 1:
I love that, and you go live on LinkedIn on Monday mornings Central time oh no, tell me what time.
Speaker 2:
It's 12, 12 central, so that's one Eastern US. I don't know what time it was there for you in New Zealand. Was it 10am the next day?
Speaker 1:
It was 7am the next day, so if you're in Australia that's 5am, but you can watch the replay, which is so good, about LinkedIn Live. If you can't attend live, it's always there for you to watch it when you get out of bed, which is really cool. How can people work with you? Where can they find you?
Speaker 2:
Go to BernadetteSmithcom and you'll find my speaker reel a little bit more about me. My website, like all that good stuff, is at BernadetteSmithcom. Cool.
Speaker 1:
And you have a book and I love people who have books. I think so clever. Tell us a bit about what your book's about and maybe why you wrote it and where can you find it so.
Speaker 2:
First of all, Lisa, I have four books, but are you talking about the? Ones that gave weddings. Is that the one you want to learn about?
Speaker 1:
Gay weddings. No, I mean, that sounds really fun, but I was thinking you're. Is it Inclusive 360 book.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, inclusive 360 was my first book that had nothing to do with gay weddings and that came out two years ago. That felt like the turning of the page, like the official turning of the page. You left the weddings behind. That's right. And the book is really about like I was just talking about before, thinking about DEI as an entire organization across all the functions, and so it has lots of best practices and great ideas from the world's most progressive organizations. So it's just jam packed full of content and very it's a very practical book.
Speaker 1:
And I love practical books because I think sometimes the books will tell you the theory but not actually how to do it, and I think when people want to do things and when they want to make progress, they often know kind of some of the theory around it. How do you actually operationalize it inside a big organization? I think that's the hard bit. So, yeah, it sounds like your book would be great for that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly that's exactly the point, and I love the book. I, you know it's been a couple years now and I'm like, I still like my book. I think it came out in 2021, not 2022. Anyway, yeah, I'm still really proud of it and someday there will be another edition.
Speaker 1:
Oh wow. I was going to say are you itching to write another book? Because I've learned that once you've written one book, it seems like a bit of an obsession.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think. So I have a lot more to say. You know, and there's more. There have been shifts, so I don't I think my next book is going to be the next edition of this book. You know, kind of the same format and flow and just with a pretty heavy update. Because you know, dei work is change management, lots change.
Speaker 1:
Yep, you've got it and people can get your book on your website.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, they can get my book anywhere. Anywhere that you buy books, you can find inclusive 360. So it's on my website, it's on Amazon, anywhere you buy books bookshop.
Speaker 1:
Cool. I love that, even in New Zealand, because sometimes I find it hard to get books here. You do have to go to the US Amazon store to get books sometimes, yeah. Yeah we're at the end of the world down here in.
Speaker 2:
New. Zealand.
Speaker 1:
Oh, thank you so much for coming on. A dog called diversity Bernadette, it's been so lovely speaking with you.
Speaker 2:
My pleasure. Thank you, lisa. I always enjoy every conversation we have. Like I said before, and so sure, and I look forward to staying in touch.