A Dog Called Diversity
A Dog Called Diversity
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work....with Maria Morukian
Ever wondered why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is crucial for an organization's growth and development? Well, we've got the right person to discuss it.
Meet Maria Morukian - a DEI consultant from Washington D.C. Maria's bicultural and multilingual upbringing, coupled with her family's experience as refugees, fueled her fascination with diverse cultural value systems. Throughout the episode, she unravels her journey to DEI work and shares the evolution of the DEI landscape over the past nine years, and beyond.
Maria talks about:
- The challenges leaders often encounter while making changes to their behaviours
- The performative approach to DEI, and its hindrances
- How altering power dynamics can provide more opportunities for those who have experienced harm
- How intergroup dialogue, storytelling, and perspective-taking can be instrumental in creating a harmonious community.
Maria touches upon the emotional labor and the lack of mental downtime in this work, the complexities of DEI and social justice work, as well as the critical role of future DEI practitioners.
Maria also enlightens us on the power of emotional intelligence learned from the most unexpected sources - our children - in creating an understanding community in our multicultural society. This episode is a must-listen for those interested in understanding DEI and its impact on our current social fabric.
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.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
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.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured on Feedspot's 20 Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Hello everyone. Welcome to a dog call diversity. I'm really excited today to have a fellow diversity, equity and inclusion consultant on the podcast, which doesn't happen very often. It's I guess it's part of my, my profession, and it's so nice to speak to other people. So welcome to the podcast, maria Maroo. It's great to have you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lisa, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Yay, and you're joining us from Washington DC, which is a fantastic city that I got to visit many, many years ago, and you run a consultancy called MSM global consulting. But let's, it'll be great to learn a little bit about you and how you, I guess, got started in this work.
Speaker 2:Of course I actually I think my start was and I would have to go back to my childhood. So I grew up in a in the outskirts of a city called Detroit, michigan, which is right in the middle of the United States, and my experience as a child, I think, was in many ways very prototypical. I grew up in Anglo white Catholic middle class upbringing, living in the suburbs. My parents were both teachers, so I grew up with a lot of books around me and a lot of a focus on education and a lot of a focus on my education in particular and pushing me and I was just to say, in many ways I think I was given a number of automatic advantages by nature of the family. I was born into, the body I was born into, and yet I also had a direct line of sight into a number of different identity dimensions. So my family was actually bicultural.
Speaker 2:My father's family and he were immigrants, were refugees, and they came over from actually refugees twice over, and so my father's, mother and sisters came to the, had to flee Istanbul, turkey, because of the Armenian genocide. So my family's Armenian, and at the time the US had actually closed its borders to any non Western European immigrants, and so they ended up in Cuba. And so my father was actually born in Cuba and had this very interesting childhood where he was speaking Armenian at home and his family called him barujan, but then, on the streets of Havana, he was Florentino and he was speaking Spanish. And then, as a young man, he and his family emigrated to the United States and started all over again, not knowing the language, not knowing the culture, really having to rely on the close knit community, and he was emigrated in the Detroit area of of not only other Armenians but also other immigrants and refugees from that region. So he grew up and was surrounded by a number of people who are Lebanese and Syrian and Italian even, and so just this very sort of mix of of cultures that came together and that was woven into his life. And then he met my mother, who grew up in a tiny little farming community in Michigan where for generations, everybody spoke Polish as their first language. So my mother, even though she was a fourth generation American, her first and only language was Polish for the first five years of her life.
Speaker 2:So I had this really interesting sort of idea of what identity was as a child, because I was surrounded by all of these different cultural value systems, behaviors, people speaking different languages, eating different foods, and so I think what I learned from that and the implicit and explicit messages that I always heard from my family was one, to always be curious about other people's stories, and that we often miss the richness of people's stories if we're only paying attention to what's on the surface.
Speaker 2:And two, that, because my family members both had either direct or indirect connections with, with identity groups that had been marginalized or oppressed, this notion of using the power of our voice to stand up for others who are being silenced was something that was very prevalent in my childhood.
Speaker 2:So I think that has been an undercurrent for me my entire life, in terms of what I've chosen to do personally as well as professionally, and really what drew me to the work of diversity, equity and inclusion was I was always fascinated by an interested in exploring how organizations function from a human centered space.
Speaker 2:So organizational culture, organizational behavior, the group dynamics and power dynamics that exist within organizations and how cultural identities are, you know, are so woven into that somehow I'm not exactly sure how or why I fell into this career based on all these things that I felt passionate about and curious about and had no idea that they actually could turn into something that I could do for, you know, for my, for my professional career. But I was lucky enough to come into contact with some other people who were doing this work and facilitating dialogues and leading organizational change initiatives around diversity, equity, inclusion and intercultural competence, and so I think that exposure to this work from an early stage in my career really gave me the opportunity to see what is out there and what is possible when we bring people together to explore these. You know, these aspects and these challenges around diversity.
Speaker 1:That was a great story. I the the starting with that. You know I grew up in a fairly white middle class Catholic. I'm like where? Where is this story going? How does this link to divestee work? But describing, I guess, the rich cultural experience that you had growing up clearly informs the work that you do and is so fascinating. And I, when I think back to the start of my career, I got interested in organizations also from a people perspective, like how do, how do organizations manage their people and get the best out of people that they have? Yeah, which is there's a real similarity there. I wanted to ask you you know what has changed? You've been, you've been doing this work in your business, I guess for over nine years, but I guess thinking about this work for longer and thinking about your place in the world for longer, what have you seen change during that time in terms of, I guess, the work that happens in organizations, and are we moving forward or are we moving backwards?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes. So yes, I've, you know, nine years owning MSM Global and doing this work on my own and about 20 years being involved in organizational change and leadership development, focusing on DEI. And I think what's interesting to me is that, although there are certain things that remain the same in and what I mean by that is from a, from a humanistic standpoint the skills that we need in order to be able to contribute and build thriving organizational environments and systems where everybody feels that sense of belonging, I don't think that's changed. You know, the tools are there for us in many ways, and also, I think what has not necessarily changed is there continues to be resistance to adapting to those necessary changes, and that resistance is happening not only at an individual level, but it's also institutional, and I think that's just because our systems are designed to. I'm trying to remember what a colleague used to say you know, we often talk about the system is broken, and she always says the system is not broken, the system is functioning exactly as it was designed to function. And I thought that's really powerful to be able to take a step back and say you know, we keep talking about how they're broken, but what we really need to do is observe them and say what's it going to take for us to disrupt these systems? Because all of us, regardless of whether we are benefiting from the systems or whether we are being marginalized or harmed by the systems, we're contributing to those systems. So I don't think that's changed right. We're still fighting that uphill battle to figure out how do we actually engage in institutional change to really shift our value systems and the way that our organizations and our institutions operate, to truly embrace and center equity.
Speaker 2:What I have seen change, which gives me hope, a couple of things, you know. I think over the last three years, for example, we have seen, not only within the United States but globally, an increased not only willingness but demand to talk about these topics of oppression and inequality, whether we're talking about racial injustice, whether we're talking about sexism, whether we're talking about, you know, anti-lgbtq plus or xenophobia. But I think that there's an increased demand and desire to raise these issues to the surface and talk about them, do something about them. And then I also think, even going further back, when I first started doing leadership, development, training and consulting many moons ago, I remember having conversations, sometimes with my, you know, even internally in the organizations where I worked where we would say, okay, we're redesigning this leadership program and something that's really important for us to focus on is emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2:And even at the time, emotional intelligence was not a new concept. The research had been around for quite some time. But I remember the organizational leadership saying oh no, no, no, no, we don't talk about emotions, we don't talk about feelings. You know, that's not something that our leaders or managers are going to be willing to explore. And we kept pressing them and saying but this is something that is absolutely critical for their success, especially as we move into the future and what the workforce of the next generation of the workforce is looking for.
Speaker 2:And true to those leaders' warnings, a lot of the participants in our early trainings were very opposed to talking about emotional intelligence. Why are we discussing this? I don't need to empathize with my employees, I need them to do their job, so on and so forth. It took a decade within one institution that I was a part of, but across that number of years, we did slowly but surely start to see progress whereby, the time I left that organization although it had been a number of years participants, leaders, were coming into our classroom. And we would say who knows what emotional intelligence means? And everyone's hand would go up and they would easily articulate what it meant, why it was important, how to practice it. So I offer that as one example, but I do think that we're starting to see that level of sophistication and willingness to explore the human side of organizations, and I think that's also trickling out when it comes to talking about inclusiveness, belonging and equity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one of the good outcomes from COVID, if we can use those words together. I think it shocked many people into realizing that there is a human that comes to work every day and human struggle when things go wrong and needing to recognize that human side. And I liked that story where you said it was 10 years of change in an organization to start talking about emotional intelligence, which is a well-researched, well-established concept, and particularly in leadership, to be a good leader, having emotional intelligence is really important. But I liked that.
Speaker 1:I think often when we're working on DEI initiatives, we're expecting change to happen straightaway. It's like we do an action and we expect the change to be instant and because we spent money on it, so what's going on? And in reality, this work is change management, and change management takes time. I wanted to ask you then you know, sometimes people, when they do put something in place, when they do deliver say, an inclusive leadership program within an organisation and they wonder why the change isn't instantaneous and sometimes that's looked at as a failure. In fact, it's not, probably not. We just don't know how it's affected those leaders. Yet what are some of the other reasons that you think efforts in this space fail?
Speaker 2:Oh men, they're my. So I think some of the challenges that I have seen get in the way of progress. One is when leaders take a performative approach to the work, and I say performative approach because I don't think that all leaders are only addressing this from a performative mindset. I think there are many leaders who care and want to be committed, and it's more so a lack of knowledge and a lack of vision to be able to see what the end outcome should look like, and so they grasp for a lot of what we call that low hanging fruit. Right, let's do activities, let's do celebrations, let's do some training. Maybe we'll do an assessment, but beyond that, maybe we'll put together a committee, yes, and make it work. We'll put out statements when you know, when crises occur. And it's not that any of those individual outputs or activities is wrong. It's that the focus is so much on churning out activities. Right, it's on outputs rather than focusing on what are the outcomes that we want to achieve and what are the measurements that we need to put in place so that we know we're making progress toward those outputs, which requires us to actually take a step back and not be in reaction mode. Most leaders are very task oriented here's.
Speaker 2:I have been rewarded my entire career by seeing a problem and being able to identify the solution to the problem. And what I'm telling these leaders to do is this is not the kind of problem that you can solve 123. And you can't solve it by decree Right? This is not a technical challenge where you can come in and say the leader can come in or the external consultant can come in and say I have all the answers for you. I'm the DEI fairy, let me sprinkle my magic and we'll fix everything.
Speaker 2:And these are complex, you know, wicked challenges, and so they often, because they're complex, they can be hidden, they can be denied and they can't be solved by just one person saying do this and do that. So I think they take time and they take a reflection and a reorientation around our shared values and beliefs and practices and roles that we play. It requires us to shift power dynamics and provide more opportunities for input and involvement from the people who have been on the receiving end of harm. So that, I think, is where a lot of organizations and leaders are struggling right now to figure out how do we take things to the next level, because, yes, we want to. We want to be a part of the solution, but we just don't know how to tackle it. And we're still looking at it through this lens of give me the set of tasks to fix the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, as you were talking earlier about, the system's not broken. The system's designed to do what it's doing and it's successful. And in many organizations the system is designed to make money. Do it quickly, achieve goals, achieve the KPIs, to make the money. In many organizations they're listed on a stock exchange. They're publicly owned. We've got to deliver return to shareholders, so every quarter we've got to be doing stuff every half year, every year. So you've got this system of task orientated, move forward, do it quickly, make money. And in some ways it's really hard for leaders to be able to come out of that churn, I guess that mouse wheel and think longer term, because you're not getting rewarded for that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So, even if organizations are rewarding managers for their DEI efforts, they're yearly and those bonuses are yearly, and so, okay, go ahead. Yeah, how do you? Yeah, it's it's like you know, like it's we. There's this system that we're trying to change, that it's in opposition to what we're trying to achieve, I think.
Speaker 2:And and even those, the performance measurements, I think can sometimes be problematic, because what I've often seen is that when managers have a performance metric around DEI, sometimes it also is performative right. It's more focused on outputs. I attended this many events. I, you know, I participated with this affinity group, or whatever the case may be. It's more related to quantity rather than what are the competencies that these managers need to demonstrate and how can we measure that they're behaving in ways that are, you know, are showing the demonstrating those competencies? Are people experiencing those managers and that shows them that they feel cared for, that their manager is truly centering equity and inclusion, and so I think it's possible to measure those things. It takes a little bit more finesse of the performance metric system than I think many organizations have had an opportunity to really do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I agree. I wanted to ask you about I was going to say the American context, but it's not just America, it's. I'm seeing this polarization of views and I think a lot of it can be is fueled through the way we consume media. But in this space, instead of people coming together and trying to solve problems so, you know, black people coming together with white people, coming together with the LGBTIQ plus community we're seeing those communities become more disparate and those communities also, you know, criticizing other communities and and in fact, we're all trying to do the same thing, we're all trying to get to the same end goal. What's been your experience of that polarization and like, how can we fix it?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think, just like with so many other issues that we've been talking about in this conversation, this is not new, and the what often happens in these moments of significant social awakening, social reform, is that the backlash does tend to try to create divides so that it it lessens the power of the people who are trying to come together and say we need to, we need to make a difference, and I, you know, I also think that what is different this time around although it's certainly not the first time we've seen this, this level of polarization at, you know, across our society, is that it's it travels so much more quickly and it's so much easier for all of us to remain entrenched in our echo chambers and surround ourselves only by people and voices and media that reinforce what we believe, what we feel comfortable with, and that, I think, has led to a more prolonged societal polarization, ideological polarization, I know. In the United States, for example, we've seen over the last, you know, few years in particular, a significant increase in, you know, not only polarization across ideological divides, but an increasing level of distrust and individuals reporting that not only do they believe that people who are on the other side of the ideological spectrum are wrong in the way that they view the world, but they see them as more ignorant, even immoral, and dangerous to democracy, to our, to our society, and so that's happening across the board. So the, I think, the, you know, again, we do have the tools as a society, as as individuals. There's so much research that has shown the power of intergroup dialogue, storytelling as a, as a way of building community and perspective taking, giving people opportunities to learn how to listen to one another from that human space, instead of getting caught up in the, in the data and the statistics, focusing on this other human being in their story and disagreeing, but without dehumanizing each other. Right, and so, yeah, it's just that it's. It's a lot easier for us to hide from each other and not have those types of conversations. So I think it really requires much more of an intentional, an intentional approach on the part of, you know, leaders not communities but also in a professional setting.
Speaker 2:For so often, I mean for so long, we've had this idea and I think leaders continue to hold on to this idea that you know we don't talk about those issues, those polarizing issues in the workplace.
Speaker 2:Just come in and leave, leave your emotions at the door, leave your, your ideologies, your politics at the door, and I understand that. But I also think that we're doing ourselves and our organizations a disservice if we don't create the space to say you're, you're bringing that with you right, whether we talk about it or not. So why don't we create space to just have some thoughtful, compassionate conversations where we can seek common ground and we can understand not only what you believe but why you believe it? Because, even if I fundamentally disagree with you, share your story about why. Oh my gosh, I learned so much about the, the, the harm that you've experienced, the hardship that you've experienced, the, the joy that you've experienced, the, the, what brings you meaning in life. Right, there's so much that draws us together and focuses on that connection, and we just need to create the space to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so well said, I've got so many questions, let's oh, I wanted to ask you because I don't get to speak to many other DEI consultants, because I have discovered that, while I have a mindset about there's enough work for everyone, we don't necessarily need to compete with each other. We can also collaborate. Not all consultants take that view, so it'd be great to hear from you what are some of the challenges that you have working in this profession as a consultant. What are you, I guess, struggling with now?
Speaker 2:Oh, well, hmm, I think, like many other practitioners and consultants doing diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice work, we are tired. It is emotionally, mentally and physically taxing work. It's deeply meaningful work, obviously, which is why we continue to do it. But I think because there's been such an uptick not only in the demand for it, but also because we are experiencing on a day-to-day basis that backlash right and that backlash and resistance in all of its forms, whether it's more just kind of ambivalence or sort of general acceptance that this is important, but a lack of energy or willingness to really give more. It's a great description.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, I've got it, but I had some problems with other things right, and open hostility where we're literally being attacked and sometimes verbally assaulted in spaces where we're trying to engage in these dialogues. So it's a lot for us to take in, and I think, on top of that, with the pandemic pushing so many of us into the virtual space I don't know if you've experienced this, but it has definitely opened me up to be able to do this work for a broader audience, because I don't have to travel necessarily, but it also means that every single minute of my time is taken with, often doing the really deep work. There's no off switch, so it can sometimes be multiple meetings, dialogues, training sessions, coaching sessions all in one day, and so by the end in fact, I was just telling my husband earlier I'm so fried, I just want to go and sit and just look at a tree.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you said that, because I get some days it's three o'clock or four o'clock in the afternoon. I am completely fried and for some reason yesterday I got through to six pm and I didn't feel too bad. But yes, I hadn't connected that with the emotional labor that goes with this work and also the no mental downtime. So if you are traveling to deliver something for a client, you have mental downtime in the travel time. You know in a hotel, all of those different things. But yeah, you're on all. Thank you, I hadn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to get so burnt out from it when I was traveling a lot, you know, and it would be back to back. Now I revel when I get to travel because I get a plane ride. I get a plane ride just by myself and I love my children, but there's nobody asking me for food or snacks or to look at anything. It's just me.
Speaker 1:I get that.
Speaker 2:And I don't know, lisa, if this is another challenge that you've been facing.
Speaker 2:But I also think that you know, in terms of what you mentioned around competition, collaboration within the, the DI profession and consulting world, I have found that I think that there are some not all practitioners that have perhaps are not extending the you know, as much grace, as much openness and curiosity for different approaches and voices to be a part of this conversation.
Speaker 2:That can sometimes, without intending to, I think, sometimes cause harm because they're so focused on on the accountability measures that I think they also lose the perspective or the willingness to be curious about what's causing somebody to be resistant, and so I find myself sometimes even struggling and again, as I mentioned at the, you know, when I was sharing my story, I identify as white, I am a cisgender female, heterosexual, upper middle class like I got a lot going.
Speaker 2:I don't have any disabilities, it, you know, when it comes to checking the privilege boxes, I check a whole lot, and so I find myself sometimes struggling to know whether it is acceptable for me to voice an alternate perspective in the DEI space, in the social justice space, looking and coming from the backgrounds that I do, and so I think that that can be detrimental for us. I mean, all of us need to do our own reflection and work and be open to feedback. Certainly, you know, into critique if we're saying or doing something that's perpetuating harm. At the same time, I feel like sometimes we lose the ability to be in dialogue with each other and it's like we're all trying to achieve the same outcomes. Yeah, but sometimes I feel like we get lost in arguing amongst ourselves about the right verbiage to use or the right approach, rather than looking at what is the end outcome. We're trying to.
Speaker 1:Yes, I always think you know this problem is bigger than all of us. Everyone needs to be contributing and working together. So, yeah, I feel you. One of the one of the things I do in my business is I have a course for people who want to work in this space, within organizations, and maybe people who are already there, but I'm not sure what they're doing, what I've noticed happening. So I, most of my clients, are in Asia, and I was living in Singapore during COVID and when George Floyd was murdered, and so what I noticed in Asia happening is a real scramble to put in the and I leaders in mainly multinational companies but in place in countries in Asia, which was great, amazing, you know, awesome.
Speaker 1:Except, often, the people that were appointed are really good people, purpose driven, have value for this work, but may not have the understanding of how to make change happen. You know how to how, what are the things that are going to make the difference? What you know? Where should we focus? Sometimes they're trying to focus on too many things, and so I run a course which is really about yeah, how do you establish yourself in the organization, how do you have a rigorous plan? You know all of those kinds of things. But I was wondering, you know, from your perspective, what do you think are the important skills for D&I leaders to have within organizations?
Speaker 2:I well, I wrote a book on it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I love people who write books.
Speaker 2:I wrote a book on equity and equity inclusion for trainers and really the the. The impetus for the book was I wanted to write a comprehensive guide that I wish I had when I first started doing this work, because it is there's there, there's so much to learn and there's so many opportunities. And again, as we were talking about earlier, we're we're trying to enact complex, systemic change. Yeah, and so, as practitioners, we need to develop the skills to sort of see things at that institutional level and to look at the. These are all of the inflection points that I, as a practitioner, can embed these concepts and these skills into the organization. How can I be that voice? And I think, specifically for people who are in training and talent development, I think that's a huge chance opportunity because they have access to anyone who's going through learning in the entire organization and so being able to not only create effective D&I training programs, but also to be able to integrate these human centered, you know practices and and rep make sure that not only the content is reflective and representative of diverse identities, but that the people who are teaching it are, you know, reflecting those diverse identities. So there's so much that can be done.
Speaker 2:I also think I devote a whole chapter in the book to what and I made it the last chapter, although in retrospect I wish it had been the first you have to constantly be doing our own work.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter whether you've been in this field for six months or six years or 60 years, right, we all you know these are muscles that need constant sort of care and flexing, and and the language and the work keeps evolving.
Speaker 2:So I think that there's a there's a need for all of us to continue to hold the mirror up to ourselves, to be able to understand and to engage and receive information about who we are and how we're showing up and how that might be impacting the experience for others. So I think those are some, some critical elements that any D&I professional, whether they're just getting into the field or whether they've been in for a while, just kind of need to remind themselves. This is a part of the work to. It's me doing my own individual work, but also me, and so I think all of those different inflection points across the institution to to embed the I language and competency so that this just becomes a part of who we are and what we do, rather than the DEI people are coming and they're going to teach us, you know, for two hours and then go back to their offices.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why we employed them. That is so true, though, about doing your own work. I was at the dinner table maybe two nights ago and made a comment, and my youngest, who's 11 went Mom, you run your own DNA consulting business and I'm like I'm at dinner. It's been a long day. Yes, I shouldn't have said that. Give me a break. You do have to catch yourself all the time, like just because you've been anointed as the DNA leader or you're the DNA fairy who's come in to sprinkle inclusion dust over everything. It doesn't mean that you're perfect and that we all mess up, exactly, yeah. Finally, I wanted to ask you about your podcast, because, as well as loving people who write books and I would like to write a book one day I love podcasts as well, so yours is called Cultures stew podcast, which I love. Tell me about your podcast, and what are the themes and what was the intention, I guess, of starting it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the intention of starting it it actually initially was a blog and then I shifted into the podcasting space because I was interested in experimenting with a new medium. But the title Cultures stew came to me from just sort of the idea of everybody, regardless of what culture, their background, what identity they belong to, Everybody has some form of stew or soup or some secret recipe that has made its way from one generation to the next in their family, and everyone who carries on that recipe adds their own flavor. So it's, you know, all of us as individuals, although there are certain flavors that are passed down, right, we also add our own and those flavors combine in unique and beautiful ways to make, you know, to make our own stew, for lack of a better term. But I like that because it's also it represents that you know, like stews and soups are not, they're messy and sometimes like it's a bunch of different stuff thrown in that you're like how does that go together? But somehow it does.
Speaker 2:And so that's kind of the impetus for the podcast and the focus of it is we want to embrace the mess and the complexities of our multi dimensional identities and leverage, as I was saying earlier, storytelling to build connections to open ourselves up and our audience up to new ways of thinking and perceiving people, and you know whether it is one particular identity group, you know something related to one's ethnic identity or disability or age. But we also want to focus on the work of DEI and social justice and culture change, and so we often will bring in authors and researchers and practitioners who are perhaps looking at this work in slightly different ways, to compare notes, to provide valuable insights and really just to continue to broaden the conversation and our collective learning around what it takes for us to really sort of embrace this work in a holistic way.
Speaker 1:Great and you? One of the things I found on my podcast is I feel like nearly nearly every person I talk to I feel like is a friend and that if I traveled to where that person lived, it would be so nice to catch up with them. Do you find that as well on your podcast?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, and.
Speaker 2:I've never put it in those terms, I never thought of it that way, lisa, but absolutely it's like you become best friends, you become family right with these folks, because you're often talking about quite.
Speaker 1:It's quite an intimate medium and, yeah, you get these deep connections, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, so next we come to Washington DC. Lisa, you know you have a room here at my house.
Speaker 1:I'm there, oh, to put a plane next week. I need some warm weather.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got plenty of that. Believe me, that's nice.
Speaker 1:One final question what are you optimistic about in this work?
Speaker 2:I think I am most optimistic when I have conversations with aspiring practitioners, people who are new in their careers, that sort of that next generation, and I know that that often is something that people say. I have hope when I look at the next generation, but what I have seen I teach classes at one of the universities here in DC is the level of sophistication and depth that students are bringing into the classroom with them, the willingness and the ease with which they have conversations around social justice. It's not even something that they are oh, this is new and I'm trying to learn it. They're like yeah, we've been. This has been our lived experience since we were born.
Speaker 2:Right, we have been born into and surrounded by a society and a population that is far different than what we've seen in the past, and so I think that that openness and the from a sort of socio-emotional learning perspective just the way that students and young people are learning these days in collaboration and my kids I often tell this story have, from the time they were four years old in their public school here in Washington DC, have been a part of a peace program, and they have peace teachers who teach them emotional intelligence, who teach them neuroscience and mindfulness practices and conflict resolution, and they will often school me when I lose my temper with them and tell me you know, your amygdala has been hijacked and we need to de-escalate the situation. But if kids at you know ages four, five, six can be using this language and applying it with their peers and with their elders, I think that there is so much opportunity for us to build the kind of world and society that we want to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I agree, and I am just wondering does it help the situation when you've been told your amygdala has been hijacked? What does it make you mad at?
Speaker 2:When it's coming from a little kid, I think it's okay, but it is. You know, it's just. Being coached by my children is definitely an amazing learning experience. And you know, I think at the end of the day, all of us as human beings can sometimes be taken over by our emotions and sometimes that, you know, we need that little reminder. You know that's given with love and grace. But hey, just up here, maybe Gotta quiet that little voice. You're right. You're right, okay.
Speaker 1:My 14 year old would not say it like that. Well, thank you so much, Maria. It's been an absolute delight speaking with you and learning about your business and the book that you've written and your podcast. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lisa, it's been such a pleasure.