November 2, 2025 • 64 mins
In this powerful conversation, Mandi Woodruff-Santos sits down with writer and speaker Jodi-Ann Burey to unpack what it truly means to be authentic in the workplace—especially for women of color. Together, they explore how authenticity evolves over time and the ways mental health, disability, and capitalism intersect to shape our professional and personal identities. Jodi-Ann opens up about her experiences with depression and chronic pain, shedding light on the importance of self-reflection, storytelling, and community in the journey toward healing and resilience. This episode reminds listeners that authenticity isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence, purpose, and connection.
You’ll Learn:
- Why authenticity is fluid and constantly evolving
- How mental health and disability influence professional identity
- The role of community and connection in resilience
- The impact of capitalism on authenticity and well-being
- How storytelling can foster understanding and belonging
- Ways to create safe spaces for authenticity at work
- Why prioritizing your health and joy over job security matters
Key Quote:
“Authenticity isn’t static—it’s something we keep rediscovering as we heal, grow, and connect with others.” — Jodi-Ann Burey
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, ba fam, let's be real for a second, and
y'all know I keep it a book. The job market
has been brutal, now not brutal trash, especially for women
of color. Over three hundred thousand of us have disappeared
from the workforce this year alone, and not by choice,
but because of layoffs, disappearing DEI programs, and stagnant wages
(00:20):
that keep cutting us out of opportunity. Our unemployment rate
has jumped to over seven percent, while our pay gap
continues to widen. I know all of that sounds dire,
but here's what I want y'all to know. You do
not have to wait for the system to save you.
That's exactly why I created the Mandy money Makers Group
coaching community. It is a coaching community that is built
(00:41):
for us by us. Inside the community, we're not just
talking about how to negotiate or to how to get
the job that you want. It's about finding purpose in
your career. It's about finding communities and others, feeling seen,
feeling heard, and also having a sounding board and a
mirror to reflect your own magic, your own sparkle right
(01:03):
back to yourself. In this community, you'll get group coaching
led by me, but you also get peer to peer
accountability with proven tools and resources that can help you
do what we have always done since rise. Even when
the odds are stacked against us, despite all the challenges,
we will rise. If you're interested in joining the Mandy
(01:24):
money Makers community and having that support to bolster you
and help you tap back into your magic so that
you can lead your career with intention and heart and
your own intuition, trusting that again, please join us. You
can find information in the show notes of today's episodes
or go to mandymoney dot com slash community. That's Mandy
(01:47):
m A n d I money dot com slash community.
I would love to see y'all there. Enrollment is open,
so please go check out mandymoney dot com slash community. Today.
Hey Brown Ambition, Hey ba fam, I want to welcome
(02:07):
today's guest. She is a returning guest to the Brown
Ambition Studio and just one of those people who you
can't stop thinking about after you have been grace with
their presence, and that's certainly the case for me. Ever
since she was so gracious as to join me on
Brown Ambition. I want to say a couple of years ago,
but Jody Ane Beuret is back in the Brown Ambition
(02:30):
studio and she's here to talk about her brand new book.
It's called Authentic, The Myth of Bringing your Full Self
to Work. And I know as soon as people hear
this title, they're going to like, especially Brown Ambition listeners.
It's going to be like, Ooh, I'm sacked. Let's talk
about this shit right here. Jodian's a powerhouse, y'all. On
(02:50):
top of having a viral ted X talk about authenticity
at work, she's also a champion for health equity. Her
voice is really changing the w that we are talking
about race culture and what it actually means to be
authentic at work. Authentic for who? Authentic, Why? Authentic for
what purpose? These are all really important questions that she
(03:13):
challenges and asks herself and us in corporate America in
her new book. So I can't say enough about it.
I really enjoyed this book. It is unlike any book
that I've read recently, and it's a book I'm going
to open again and again when I sort of want to,
when you want to remind yourself that, oh, I'm actually
not alone, I'm not crazy. This is an experience that
(03:34):
we can share Jody, and I just want to say
thank you so much again for coming back to brad
Ambition and now you can give me my flowers. Thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Well, thank you so much Vandy for having me back.
It was a pleasure meaning you. I think that was
pandemic times that we did our podcast together. And so,
you know, I appreciate you so much for being on
this journey because you know, all of that ideation and
being in a community with other people and talking through ideas.
You know, this is how books come to be, you know,
(04:04):
doesn't just pop in your head. It comes from interactions
with others as well. And so, you know, thank you
for being part of the journey towards this book.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
And again congratulations. It's no small feet to have written
this book. And you're also you know, I think when
you first came on the podcast, we talked about your
your health journey. You what year was it you found
out that you had a tumor in your spinal cord?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yes, that was I was diagnosed March first, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Twenty eighteen, and you went through a really risky surgery.
You talked to me about going skiing.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Before the surgery, snowboarding.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Snowboard? Oh sorry, what's your with your Jamaican roots? Like, yes,
it makes sense obvious.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, a Jamaican someone born in Jamaica and raised in
New York City goes snowboard once a week in the
winter time. Yeah, that is a logical progression of activity.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But you were already working in the DEI space even
before you know you face this health this health challenge
doesn't seem like a big enough word. Crisis to me
is like cis right, and even though it was successfully removed,
you are still left with chronic pain that that started
(05:29):
to impact you and impact you at work. You talk
so the idea of authenticity. I think, especially with women
of color, you think about hair style and well, like
we can't take our skin off, but maybe in the
actual age our skin our upbringing, our culture, our our tone,
our language, all of that. But you also have this
(05:52):
additional layer of I know, I don't know how you
would describe it, chronic pain disability. You have this physical
condition now that is also a layer that you bring.
Can you talk about you know, kind of thinking about
as you talk about in the book, like whether or
not to disclose that you have chronic pain and that
(06:12):
you may need accommodations in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Well thank you so much for
that setup. So I do identify as a disabled person.
My mom hates when I say that. I love calling
myself disabled. I love being disabled in terms of like
having that disability identity. What does it mean to be
a part of that community and what does it mean
(06:38):
to have, you know, disability change how you see the world,
how you articulate your arguments, the ways you see institutions,
the way you see communities, and how you engage with people,
places and spaces. And so I very much feel confident in,
you know, declaring and affirming my disability identity. And so
(07:02):
what's interesting though, is after surgery and I was I
was out of work for four months. I was on
a four month with disability leave, which was just more
time than I was supposed to have and still not
enough time for kind of like the emotional processing of
(07:26):
what does it mean to go through a life changing
diagnosis and surgery? And so that completely changed my body,
and so I was heavily using a cane still when
I went back to work. I went back to work
maybe a month after I started driving again, and I
used a cane intermittently for about two years, and I
(07:48):
think three years I used a wheelchair service in airports
because it just like couldn't make it through an airport
without any type of support. And so I all that
to say that there's being disabled in a way that
is legible to other people. So if you are a
(08:09):
person who has a kne you are disabled in a
way that you do not have to express, you do
not have to articulate. There's a tipping point though where
some people, because of my age as well, I was
diagnosed with when I was thirty one, a few days
before my thirty second birthday, where people might not see
(08:31):
you as a disabled person but as someone who is
recovering from surgery. So if you get in a little
accident and you're in crutches, you have a disability, but
maybe you don't have a disabled identity, and people do
not perceive disability identity on you. You're recovering, you're an
(08:53):
injured athlete. So there was a sense where I'm like, Okay,
everyone sees that I'm disabled, right, I'm even coming to
my own identity as a disabled person. And so when
I no longer had the visual que of disability when
I was no longer using my cane than to other people,
I was someone who was not disabled. I was recovered,
(09:17):
and so it was very easy for them all that
accommodating quote unquote that they did, all that support that
they provided me within the workplace, that started to fade
once they were no longer visually reminded that I am
not the person that you knew before, or I am
(09:38):
not I don't move in spaces and I don't need
the same things as other people in the workplace. And
so I think for me, because I was reading so
much about disability identity and I was really relying on
the scholarship of crypt theorists and other disability scholars, particularly
(09:58):
black and brown disabilities, that I was totally enthralled and
just embracing disability as an identity. And so for me personally,
I had very little kind of ooh, I don't know
if I should say about the fact that I was disabled.
I remember I had a job interview and it was
(10:20):
my first time leaving nonprofits and going into the startup
world and the COO during the interview, Actually, when I
went to that interview, I did not need my cane
because I knew the layout at the office a little bit.
I didn't need the cane, but I brought it anyway
because I wanted to visibly signal that, hey, you not
(10:41):
this is we're going to talk about this, right, so
that when she had asked me, you know, if I
felt that I was prepared to handle kind of the
stress and chaos at the startup world, I looked straight up.
I looked at her, and I was like, so I
thought I was going to die last year. There's nothing
that's going to happen here that is more stressful than that.
(11:02):
So when it came to asking for quote unquote asking
for accommodation, I don't even know if I did that
as much because I had the visual Q. But when
I didn't have the visual Q, I had to keep affirming, Hey,
I have a disability. I just came back from a flight.
I'm not going to Los Angeles tomorrow. I'm not doing that.
(11:25):
I'm not needed there and I physically cannot do it.
And so when I said that, I was like, oh, yeah,
I don't need to go on this trip. It was
a problem. But then when I asserted my disability, then
she backed off. The CEO of the company that I
was working for at the time, and so I think
for me, one of the concepts that I found and
(11:47):
researching the book is called access fevering. It was coined
by a disability a crypt theorist Jay Logan smiggles, and
he talks about the ways that we have to steal
access for ourselves. And so I think, for me, my
priority and my kind of way of being is to
(12:07):
steal the access did I need. So I don't be
asking for no accommodations. I take my accommodations. I meet
my access needs by any means necessary. And for me,
as someone who has no problem being open about my disability,
I try to steal access for other people.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Hey, ba, fam, we got to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. You know,
it was interesting in the book too to hear about
your different experiences with that physical disability versus the mental
health challenges you were having. So when you had depression
and you you were, like you said, you know, you
were talking about Francis at work and you were being
(12:49):
authentic and sharing that, and then it started to make
them afraid that it was potentially a liability for the company.
This was like, Yeah, classic example of like the double
edged sword of authenticity in a way, especially when you're
you know, with a manager or someone in a power
(13:10):
position of power over you that everything seems good and
they're accepting of it, and then you get a note
from HR, yeah, reiterating that, Oh, we just want to
remind you you are required to travel thirty percent of
your of the year. You know, I just want to
be sure you're committed to that. Yeah, And can you
talk about can you talk about what that experience was?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I want to also read this, this quick little excerpt
from the book where you're talking.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Please do Do you want to read it first?
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, I want to read it. It says, and you
call it, you call the the company, the Org, the
ORGS insistence on meetings, documents, and medical surveillance dizzied into
such a spectacle the people I thought saw me couldn't
any longer. My dear colleague, whom I was am slash
am quite fond of, was still HR. I became a
(14:02):
problem to handle. Policy compliance eclipsed my authority to define
my needs. I was too honest, too visible, too authentic.
I was depressed, but they wanted me depressed. On paper.
I felt judged. I felt marked, not as we have
depression crossed out liability. I never talked about Francis again.
(14:24):
That made me so sad.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
No, wait, why am I getting emotional? I hate crying
when you have under eye eyeliner on.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Another liability.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Exactly, that's another liability. Wow, I didn't know I was
going to get emotional about that. Depression is the worst.
When you're battling depression with intense feelings of suicidality, it's tough.
(15:04):
During that time, I was stealing a lot of access
for myself. So the ORG had a work from home
policy that I think was appropriate for any workplace where
you can work remotely. If you worked in the office, great,
If you didn't work in the office, you didn't work
in office. It was a global health organization, so by
(15:25):
the fact that I was headquartered here in Seattle, everybody
worked remotely because all of our projects were in Southern Africa.
And so there were a lot of times where I
would get ready and get dressed to go to work
and then I would just not do that, like I
just couldn't hide Francis that day, and I would just
work from home. And so there are parts of that
that were incredibly helpful. That I was able to not
(15:49):
have to perform and I could just focus on my work,
which was an important outlet for me to busy my mind.
But I didn't have to deal with that kind of
emotional labor of being face to face with other people.
And then there were times where being home alone felt
really dangerous, and so I would go to the office
(16:11):
and I needed to wear that mask. And also I
just needed to be the version of myself who wasn't
speaking through Francis right, that I can sit alongside Francis
and not necessarily see ourselves as fully embodied, which was
also very helpful because my coworkers saw that I was struggling,
and I was able to get a couple of folks
(16:31):
who were in collusion for my survival. Will say that.
So I went to Malawi on a business trip and
it was it was really really challenging. I've been in
(16:56):
Allowi so many times and I never had a trip
to Mali. We like that, and I was holding on
by a fucking thread. So when I came back, I
was like very chipper about it. I was like, oh, yeah,
I'm ALLOWI was great. Francis was there, FYI, I cannot
(17:22):
travel until I get this sorted out. I said it
very casually, very you know, and I didn't know that
that conversation would go anywhere else. Also, I wasn't scheduled
to travel. There was nothing on my schedule that I
(17:42):
would be traveling again. But I was just kind of saying, like, listen,
I'm definitely not I don't know what's going on, but
I'm definitely not traveling until I can get my mental
health stabilized. That ended up escalating to HR without my knowledge,
and then I felt the hammer of the entire HR
system making sure that I would be traveling, which again
(18:03):
there was no traveling schedule. And so when I felt
these kind of interpersonal relationships revealed themselves as their true nature,
which is, we have an institutional relationship, we have a
transactional relationship. I am an employee of this place. That
(18:29):
showed me how quickly all that goodwill, all that you know,
love and support can just fall apart. And now my
livelihood is potentially at stake because what they wanted me
to do I was not going to do. And so
it just was very interesting about how that same organization
(18:49):
then handled my tumor diagnosis handled that same person who
was depressed in suicidal how it handled someone with a cane.
These are both disabling aspects of my ability to work
here and do my work. Is it not? If anything,
(19:10):
having such an acute level of depression was more disabling
to my day to day life than me you know,
walking using a cane. But there was just so much
It was so much easier to support me when the thing,
the disability was visible, I think maybe more accessible for
(19:33):
people to understand. Yeah, it was really tough.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's still this disc and I'm so sorry that I
had to go back to that chapter and I was like,
is she still working at the same place? Because when
you had the surgery, it was like they pulled that.
You know, you didn't have enough PTO, You needed more
time off, you didn't have enough time off. Your company
creates this pool where people can donate their PTO. I've
(20:01):
seen how incredible those types of pools are, by the way,
because my sister has had to tap that multiple times
for health issues. And I was always so amazed and
love that companies would even do such a thing and
so compassionate and you know, and let's rally around Jodyann,
which is what you deserved in that moment. But there's
this discomfort with depression that sticking to it like, yeah,
(20:23):
we don't know and it and and I think this
is one of those times where being authentic and actually
sharing that I think can be really helpful because anyone
who's listening, who's in a position where they manage, they
are managing people or working with people, to think about
(20:45):
how you would how you would handle someone like yourself,
like Jodianne, if if you were on their team, how
what what would you say? What would you do? Would
you know what to do? Would you know how to
be compassionate? And what they would need to support them
in that time? And if the answer is I'm not sure,
then that's a question to keep asking and to create
(21:05):
an answer to need leaders who, especially in this day
and age, how commons depression especially it was a pandemic. Uh,
we should probably have a plan for this, And yeah,
I that must have created such a and help You
(21:26):
didn't stay there very much longer?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But no, And of all the jobs I've had, I
was there the longest. But I think even if everything
was if I didn't have those negatives, I didn't leave
because of that. I left because, you know, to the
point of being even talking about tremain Leed's book and
his experience, I went through a massive health crisis that
(21:51):
changed how I saw myself. In order to stay alive,
to still be here, I had to change my life.
I could not fit this new version of myself into
the routines of my life that I had before. And
so a big part of that was leaving the comfort
of this job that I knew because I had so
(22:13):
much social capital, that would be the ideal place for
me as I was navigating you know, this post operative
recovery and you know, shifting of my own self concept,
that was the best place for me to work. But
I could not be the same, be a different person
in the same setting. So that's really why I left.
(22:35):
But I think because of that experience. You know, there's
a there's a line in the book that people have
picked up on as they've been reading it and talking
to me about it, where I say, I'm not a worker,
I'm a person at work. And it was because of
my disability experience, because I went through that that even
when I went on to manage other people, I don't
(22:58):
need a checklist that says, what do you do when
your report has someone who passes away but they're not
a close family member. What do you do when you
know you're a coworker, your report needs this thing, but
there is no policy in place of how to get
them that thing. My report is a person, and so
(23:23):
I treat them like a person and we figure it out.
And so in a lot of ways, they're regardless of
whatever the policies are within the institution, within the workplace.
As a people manager, you can still access on their behalf. Yeah,
you gotta go do this thing, you gotta go do that. Cool.
(23:43):
I'm not telling nobody that, like, go do what you
gotta do, right, you know, if I'm working with an
independent contractor and there's no built PTO for them, yeah,
take the rest of the week off and build hours.
You know. So, what are ways that we can steal access?
What are ways that we can And I love the
(24:05):
idea of thievery. I love the idea of stealing because
that's the thing that managers and companies are so afraid of.
That's why they make accommodations processes so hostile, because they're
trying to weed out people who are quote unquote gaming
the system, quote unquote abusing the system. There's this woman
(24:26):
because I was talking about this on LinkedIn and she
was like, you know, some of these people, they're like
children and they want to take a whole day off
because they have a hangnail. And what's it to you?
Do I not have PSI, Oh, it doesn't matter what
I do during that like to.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Be a woman of color and to need additional accommodations,
it just feeds into that whole idea of us being
leeches on society and you know, resource sucking. I mean,
it's this whole narrative, this toxic narrative that we're in
now that's and free to persistent proliferate. That makes me
really worry. I mean I've been worried, but like even
(25:06):
more worried for you know, BIPOC people at work, women
of color like who are dealing with something and are
too afraid that that may make them a target. I
want to read this other little excerpt from the book.
I didn't take note of chapter titles or page numbers,
(25:27):
but this.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Is no perfect that's the galley, so who knows if
it's still in the final.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Honest, yeah, I was like that's a type of wait,
this is a galley. Yeah, I love it all right.
In this excerpt, you say my manager knew about my
spinal cord injury. But when you're black, or a woman
or fill in the blank with inconsistent access needs, she
treated me like I was either lying, lazy, or just
being difficult. I didn't look broken enough for accommodations. I
(25:55):
didn't feel broken enough to insist. I stood on stages
in pain, sat in hours long meetings in pain, traveled
without notice in pain, and stayed quiet in pain until
I couldn't. I need this because of my disability. I
can't do that because of my disability. My manager apologized
(26:16):
one week, only to push back the next. It was
a boom bus cycle of disregard. I read that because
I mean, I do career coaching, right, and I have
coached women who are dealing with this exact same scenario,
and it's an impossible, like an almost impossible situation. And
(26:39):
I wanted to ask, now, how you don't currently like
you worked for a big corporation in Seattle, one of
the big ones, right, and since then you've carved out
this career for yourself as a speaker and an author
and a writer. Do you ever feel like there's a
place where you could find in corporate or in a
(27:00):
traditional role where you could be comfortable bringing all the
layers of yourself today as a version of yourself as
you are. I'm asking that because I asked myself that question. Yeah,
I don't know. If I could, it would take a
really special place.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, I mean no, I don't know, and I don't
even know if I'm looking for that. I think if
I were ever to go back to traditional work what.
I don't know if this book disqualifies me. I don't
know if this book makes me unemployable real talk?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
You mean your book about being authentic? Have you authentic?
Girl Boss? Too close to the sun.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That's my fear too.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I don't know if this podcast makes me employable?
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah certainly.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Not, because girl, I don't know if you so today
literally the episode aired on Brown Ambition, where it's me
opening taking off the mask of depression to my audience
and part of and the huge reason why I did
that is because I just felt like a liar and
(28:08):
I hated it because I'm not a liar. I don't,
I I have I'm always authentic. But I hadn't up
I hadn't updated my my own iOS to the people. Yeah,
I you know, like there's a version of me that has,
you know, has emerged the past couple of years. I
just haven't updated my iOS. It wasn't matching the tone,
(28:29):
the brand, the the persona that was true to.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Me a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I just needed to update them. You know, here's a
little iOS update. I just wanted to let you know, Yeah,
you can opt down or you can like get on
board and the vulnerability hangover afterward.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Like, thank god I have Jodianne to talk to me
about this decision.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You know, I'll say this, whether I did think about that,
does writing a book? Does saying the things that I
want to say make me unemployable? And then a really
good friend of mine reminded me that capitalism eats itself right.
You can have books that are critiquing capitalism, that are
critiquing Amazon, and it could be the number one book
(29:15):
on Amazon. So it's just like, like, I'm not too
too worried about that. But you know, I had a
friend text me a couple of years ago who he
found some job opening somewhere and he's like, man, Jodyanne,
like I work here, I can connect you. I saw
this job posting and I'm like, wow, this company could
(29:36):
really use a leader like Jodianne. And I texted back
as a baby, I work for myself. Now, here's what
the real question is, does Jodianne need a company like this?
And so I'm not really looking for a place where
I can bring my full authentic self to work. That's
just a narrative that I don't subscribe to, you know.
(29:58):
Right now, my priorities like can I if I go
back to traditional work, not even that. The thing that
needs to solve for is health insurance. I need better,
more affordable health insurance and in America, because we only
save people lives that can if it can make companies money,
(30:21):
it is really difficult to be a full time artist
and stay alive. And so that's what I'm solving for.
And so if I work anywhere, I'm trying to figure
out what the health insurance policy is looking like, I'm
trying to figure out how much you're gonna pay me.
I'm trying to carve out some type of work that
makes me feel good about myself. That's in alignment with
(30:45):
my values, that allows me to develop X, Y and
Z skills. And I'm potentially looking for I'm not really
looking for a place where I can quote unquote be
my whole self.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Heyba fam, We're going to take a quick break, break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. Yeah, there's
a part in your book that really resonated. I mean,
so much of it resonated with me. But you so
in terms of like I feel very similar to you,
I'm not. I wouldn't be naive enough to think that
(31:18):
I could really do that. You know, I'm not that age.
But there was a time where I was that naive.
Oh bless her, And I was very much like this
woman in your book that you talk about. You're at
you're at a startup. You're you're working in the DEI
kind of space at the startup, and you're on stage
and you're obviously a black woman. And there's someone in
(31:39):
the audience who comes up to another black woman and
she's like starry eyed, like Jody Hann's there, it must
be great for us, And you look at her and
you're you're trying to like convey the get out stare
like yes, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Are you sure?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
And then and then soon enough you see her at
the company. She's gotten a job, and you kind of
have this and you have this like back and forth
on the phone voice notes where she's like yeah girl,
and you're in Europe. You apologize for like not I
guess what, like not warning her more effusively. But she's like,
in that frame of mind, I wouldn't have listened. I
(32:19):
was exactly like her, walking my starry eyed self into
like the last major corporation I worked with, and I'll
never forget that, you know. And I was being trotted
out on a virtual stages as during the pandemic, trotted
out on the I was in a very public facing
persona role to be like consumer facing too, you know.
(32:41):
And I was hired the Sun in the winter of
twenty twenty sorry, yeah, twenty twenty one, so post everyone
trying to find their black unicorn woman to represent the brand,
right should have known whatever didn't. And there was two
women of color, two black women who like just were like, oh,
I'd love to put time in your calendar to get
to know you, and one in particular was like, girl,
(33:04):
this is not what you think it is. And I
remember leaving that call like, wow, misery loves company. Some
people are just so native, doesn't she know I'm different
and special?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, and this is I'm.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Going to change the shit. And meanwhile completely and was
out on my ass like just a few months later.
And so this part where you say, when you realize,
you say the startup want in my black face, my
black experience, my black insights, my black abundance, my black
professional network to evade criticism for being yet another company
built for white women, by white women. But the visibility
(33:39):
imposed on me aligned with my desires to advance my career.
Nonprofits didn't pay as well or offer enough public exposure.
And you use an expression we're going to talk about.
I took a sabbatical gaze in pursuit of the kind
of professional visibility I wanted that that was so real,
you know, because I wanted that damn job Ooh it
(34:01):
felt good to be chosen for that. It felt like
big brand, big money, big opportunity. The ego was purring.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Was being set up to fail. And so I want
to stop there and ask you to talk about the
sabbatical gaze and what that means and where that comes
into play in your career.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, so one, apologies for the long care happening outside
my door. I can't hear it. Oh okay? Am I
the only one? Okay, if you can't hear it, then
I'll stop worrying about it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Riverside and Zoom are very good about like, Okay, don't worry.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I can't, okay, because I've been sitting here freaking out.
So the sabbatical gaze is my riffing and trying to
think with my kind of first intellectual hero Bell Hooks.
And so, in one of her books, Black Looks, Race
and Representation, she talks about the oppositional gaze, and she
(35:03):
interrogates black women's looking relationships with pop culture. What are
the ways that we have to be critical spectators because
there are the dominant narratives don't exist to affirm us.
So there's this way that we have to kind of
ignore our own identities and ignore everything that we know
(35:25):
to enjoy this movie, right, to watch, to watch this
TV show, to listen to this song. And so in
the chapter where I'm talking about this, I mentioned this
Nike commercial that Serena Williams had narrated, and I think,
like a lot of black women, we feel very connected
to Serena Williams because she is the image of black excellence.
(35:48):
But her excellence is not enough to protect her professionally.
It's not enough to protect her in terms of her
own life, you know, even going through a major health crisis.
And I'm like, well, Serena Williams almost died during childbearing,
and her excellence and her money and her status didn't
protect her. So what hope do we have? And so
(36:08):
I'm so emotional about them. I could watch that commercial
right now and cry. But Alicia Montano, who's a middle
distance runner, I believe, a world champion Olympian. She was
branded as the pregnant Runner because she competed twice pregnant,
once when she was like eight months pregnant too, so
she just got dubbed the pregnant Runner. She was also
(36:30):
sponsored by Nike. She came out with The New York
Times op ed and many many documentary and started this
campaign called Dream hashtag Dream Maternity, and she talks about
the ways that as a Nike sponsored athlete, when you
are Even though she was celebrated for being pregnant, she
got all, the visibility for being pregnant, her pregnancy was
(36:53):
not supported. Nike and Olympic Committee do not pay athletes
who are pregnant postpartum. If you are not racing, you
do not get paid and you do not get health insurance.
And so Alison Felix, one of our most decorated track Olympians,
also talked about the ways that she was not paid
(37:13):
and didn't have health insurance when she was pregnant with
her child. And so I had a feeling about that.
It's Nike. Why do I think Nike's out here standing
for women and girls? Despite the Serena Williams of it all,
despite the message of it all, there are ways that
we can just get lulled into the seduction of feeling
(37:34):
so seen by these images that we don't want to look.
And so maybe we clock the criticism, we clock the questions,
and so what are ways that we are intentionally not
doing that work? And so we take this kind of sabbatical.
I see it, I could do it. I see the analysis.
(37:57):
I don't want to engage, I don't want to look.
I want the pleasure of feeling seen. And so what
happens though, when you take that rest is other people
are looking at you. So I'm here pursuing the things
that I want to pursue professionally, and other black women
are looking at me thinking that if Jodiane is here,
(38:18):
then this is a safe place. And it's not enough
for me to be safe. It's not enough for me
to get what I want from this particular company. If
that means that I'm hurting other black women, that hurts me.
And so just kind of pushing back on myself for
the ways that we take these sabbatical gazes and we
(38:41):
don't want to engage. It corrupts us in the type
of way.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Well, my heart is like I mean, to your own
point in the book, you talk about how at the
end of the day, it's capitalism that's the enemy. It's
these corporations. It's not like you, Jodyanne, would be responsible
for every black woman who like that's the weight of
being the only one or if you only different, right
(39:09):
that you have to sort of release yourself of that pressure.
I know you know that and all that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
But yeah, I mean, it's not that I feel pressure.
It's am I walking in alignment with my own values?
Am I moving in a way that I feel good
about that is also authenticity, and so my pursuit for
visibility is yes, true, But what am I willing to
sacrifice because what happened to me at that job is
(39:35):
that I stood in this in between. I'm representing an institution,
but I also represent this community. And so if I
do something right at the company, I'm hurting people that
I care about. And if I try to steal access,
if I try to, you know, create spaces for them,
then I'm compromising my standing at the company. And so
(39:58):
it's about just not to say that there's a right
way to decide I was out of alignment with the
way that I wanted to move.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Asking yourself that question, like, am I in alignment? It
can be really scary, especially in a time like this.
Some people who are out of alignment don't have the
option of getting in alignment, you know, if that means
quitting and finding a new opportunity. You can't always plan that.
It can be a really it can be isolating, kind
(40:31):
of depressing place to be. What would you say to
a woman who's listening and then feeling that way.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, I mean it's a nice say this. In the book.
Several times I'm not telling you to quit your job.
That's not my job. I'm laying out my own experiences,
experience of other people. I'm laying out research and cultural commentary,
all of these things, and you, I hope it's confronting,
and then you decide, however, you decide of the ways
(41:01):
that you want to move after that, I would say
to look at the ways that you're defining status and
success and if maybe that's a way that is driving
you to make decisions that are harmful to your health,
well being, self concept, et cetera. Because we can even
(41:22):
see in this kind of labor movement surge that's been happening,
you know, since the pandemic with a great you know,
resignation and all the kind of worker actions that have
happened since, is that what I have found is that
people who have the most resources feel like they have
the most risks. They can't lose that big job at
(41:45):
that big corporation. That's you know, sinking them into a deeper,
deeper depression every day. I know a lot of people
who are very well educated, very highly paid, and they
make decisions in ways that you think that if they
didn't have this job, they'd be on the Street tomorrow.
(42:07):
So I would just kind of challenge that that there
is more room to make changes in our lives than
we think, because I feel like the people who take
the most risk are the people who have the least
amount of resources, and often they're advocating on for all
(42:28):
workers in a way that we eventually benefit. And so,
as someone who lives in Seattle, I've never worked at Amazon.
I've interviewed, but I've never worked there. But the ways
that Amazon treats its warehouse workers are structurally very similar
to the way that they treat black and brown people
who work at headquarters. And so if the office workers
(42:51):
and the warehouse workers were in collusion in some way,
maybe there's a larger movement for workers' rights that could
on the horizon for us. Those are big macro things,
you know. If I'm talking to an individual person about
their individual problem, I would just encourage them to really
(43:11):
survey their lives and survey the decisions that they can make,
and to see what are ways that we can better
ensure our health and well being. I don't know what
that looks like. You know, our jobs are also tied
to health insurance. It's the way that we can take
(43:31):
care of ourselves the way that we take care of
our families, and for a lot of black and brown communities,
we're not just taking care of the people in our
household and so and especially during the time when black
women are being so unlawfully and morally targeted and our
livelihoods and survival are on the line, and there's a
(43:53):
not insignificant portion of the country that are celebrating that,
I think the calculus just looks different. So I would say,
think about your choices and know that you cannot make
a bad choice. You can't make a bad decision.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And decisions don't have to be permanent either, absolutely not
an idea of permanent absolutely not scovering yea, yeah, yeah.
I think what I enjoy about your book too is
it's not like you say, you're not giving one clear path,
but it is. It is a challenge and a call
to action to just like examine how you're moving and
(44:39):
and to not I feel like to not have the
illusion that what we do at work doesn't impact our
well being. Overall that being said, I feel like the
freedom of just like not like disassociating, but looking at
your the way who you are at work, A little
(45:00):
bit different than where you are outside of work can
be helpful. I guess you'd call that code switching, but
maybe not looking. Do you think that people? Do you
think that it's too risky to look for community, I
know community and like looking for to be seen and
(45:20):
to like have build those relationships. Do you think it's
in this current climate too fraught, too risky to open
up to colleagues at work at a time like this,
and that we should be looking, you know, more to
spaces like this, you know, to one another, to peers
outside where you're not where, yeah, where it's maybe a
(45:43):
little bit safer to be your be yourself honestly.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
And this is the biggest driver of the book is
where are we gathering and how we build relationships and
community beyond the institutional gaze. There's so much of our
relationship building that is so surveilled within the workplace. Even
employee resource groups as like such a wonderful, beautiful space
to find other people who are similar to you, have
(46:11):
similar experiences, you know, have similar values to you. That's
also an incredibly surveilled environment. And there are limitations on
what you can do together. And so I'm a firm
believer in Whisper and Whisper networks in building relationships outside
(46:33):
of work. You can build professional relationships that aren't necessarily
within your organizational reporting lines. And so I think the
biggest thing for us, you know, in this new kind
of authoritarianism and fascist regime, is to find communities and
building strong communities that are not surveiled. That is the
(46:58):
foundation of of whatever is going to come next. And
so that was a challenge for me, especially coming out
of the pandemic, especially coming after a major health crisis
where a lot of the relationships that I had did
not exist anymore after I got out of the hospital,
which is like a whole other conversation for a whole
other podcast, but my whole entire social world fell apart
(47:23):
than the pandemic. Then I don't work anywhere, you know,
I don't have people that I get to see every day.
And so even in the and then writing a book
makes you really isolated. And so even the process of
writing this book, I was like, girl, where are your people?
When shit goes down? Where are you going? Who has
(47:44):
your back? Who's back do you have? You know? And
so that has pushed me to create with other people
you know a big I do this reading series in
Seattle now called Lounge. The people's art and the people
that I'm working with we used to work together at
(48:05):
a company, right, But I was like, wait, you know
how I work. I know how you work. Hey, let's
do something for the people. And even through building lit lounge,
building that community of just so many beautiful black and
brown people who want to spend a Friday night, you know,
listening to literature, that is the foundation of whatever could
(48:25):
come next. And so I would just encourage people to
build and invest in your social worlds because then the
multiplier effects of that are just limitless.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
And like your physical social world, not the parasocial like
the social media, which has place, right.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
It has its place, But you got to know people,
like you got to know somebody who's going to drive
soup to your house, right, You got to know somebody
that you know when they're having a tough time, you're
dropping everything to go and support them, like deep, deep,
deep community. That's not a like on Instagram. What are
(49:11):
ways that we're showing up Because when the risk is high,
which it is high, incredibly high for us. Now, we
need those people.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
I wish we had more time. Well, we do have
more time. I mean, I think, you know, being clear
across the other side of the world. Remind me how
the hell'd you end up in Seattle again?
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Was it school child? No, I came here. I came
here after I got my master's screen public health, and
I took a job out here at the Org and
I worked there for almost five years and I just
haven't left. Seattle is a hard place to be in,
but it's a really difficult place to leave.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Interesting, okay, yeah, kind of suck you in. What is it?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
You know, very moderate weather. You know, I can get
to the mountains within an hour and a half. No
one looks nice here, so just wear sweatpants every day.
I like composting. We're mail in only Dallot State, So
I like voting. You know. It don't take me longer
than fifteen minutes to drive anywhere. It's just a very
(50:22):
convenient place. But it's so white. It is suffocatingly white.
And so that's why I love lit Lounge because at
least I get to see a bunch of black and
brown people.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I love that for you too. And also my favorite,
one of my favorite dance clubs in the city was
like on East fourth Street. It was called lit Lounge.
It's no longer with us, But.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Wait, is that what it was called? It louds that's
a lit lounge. Oh my god, I love that.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
And I was there Friday and Saturday night every weekend
during a very particular time in my life. Yeah, twenty
eleven through twenty about fourteen. I can't believe I was outside,
like old enough to know a club that's no longer
open in New York.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
You're so funny. Let me tell you what I was
in New York in my twenties. I would leave my
house at midnight to go club. That is oh my god.
I still want to do that.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
But you have breakfast when you get home, because it's
like six four six.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
For all the twenty somethings be outside, yo, have fun,
have so much fun.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Because now I mean, but you could still I mean
you could still be there. You don't got no kids.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I mean yeah, but I'll be wearing sneakers.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
Insomnia. Are you still dealing with insomnia or no?
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, I'm always doing I'm like to work.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I got sleep apnea, so I'm not sleeping anyway. I
might as well go.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
To the go.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
But I got these kids at home.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
I can't do it. But you know, it was just
me and my thoughts.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Throw out where we're not that old, Jodi am. We
can't be like enjoy your youth.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
No, I'm still out here. Okay, I'm outside.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
I've had to reckon with being the suburban housewife that
like Chapel Roone makes fun of and all her music,
and I'd be like jamming to her songs and be like,
oh no.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I only known in name only. I don't know anything
about this individual.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Oh her music, it's good, little, it's my little. I
think some people they have like their uh their what
you call it, like guilty white girl, white girl music, guilty, pleasure, chopel,
a little bit of mine.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
I'm still listening to the nineties R and B child
like whatever music was popping when I was in high
school in college. I still listen to that.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
I love. Okay, that's probably a healthy replace team. What
do you mean I'm not being I'm not feeling seen
by like a twenty four year old white woman from
Saint Louis like weird, so weird.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
But I love that for you. I do love that
for you. I am on the dochi train. So I
have updated, so it's like me too.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
I've seen her in a week in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Could I tell you when I texted my nieces Seattle, Yes,
yes she is. Thank god is that would have traveled? Yes,
she is. For her, I actually had tickets for Infinity
Song that night, and so Infinity Song I already had
those tickets, but then Doci. I was like, I'm so
sorry Infinity Song. I wanted to rock what you loved
that little uh it's like a black sibling, a yacht
(53:39):
rock group. Yes, love them down. But Doci's come the
same night, and I just it's one of my life
goals to see DOCI life.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
So we're both Doughchi stands okay connect.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, I'm super excited. I was when I first heard
of music. I texted my nieces there in their twenties,
and I was like, hey, what do we think about Doci.
And then a couple of weeks later when I talked
to them, they're like, yeah, when we saw that, we're like, yo, Auntie,
Jody's gone. She's gone. And I was gone because once
I started learning about Don't Chi, I'm gone. I'm with it.
(54:13):
I'm in the swamp baby, let's do this.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
I'm in the swamp. I'm like boiled peanuts. I know
what boiled peanuts are. I grew up in Georgia.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
I love that. For you, I don't, but I'm just
here for it.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
It's disgusting, is what they are. I don't fuck with
boiled peanuts.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
They sell them in plastic sacks on the highway. That's
what I know. On the way to Panama City for vacation,
you would see a boiled peanuts stand and they would
just be slimy. I mean, imagine a peanut and water
Costic as a child with the dianut skins getting sloughed off,
even the soft little.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
But I as a child with diaspora. I support street food.
I love food at the start of the road. I
think that's been the backbone of our survival.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yeah, I'll take a tomato. I'll take a you know,
a meat pie. I'll take a little pasto. We're in
d r but no, noo peanuts.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
All right, Well, we still love you, Doc, and we'll
be there at the concert.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
What else is making you smile and bringing your joy
these days? Because we talk heavy.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Besides DOCI put the mother money and my motherfucking ha. Yes,
long as you bitches. What's up? It's do chi bitch Okay. Anyway,
let's people.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Understand having kids, I can't listen to her in the
car like I want to, oh to, I'll be making
up errands just to listen to the blast man.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
What's gonna be joy? I'm in the middle of books
for and.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Are you able to travel a lot? Are you gonna
be coming.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
Or I've been doing some traveling. I just came back
from my New York event, and to just have that
kind of home coming, Oh, bring out about it. Yeah.
So I think being on a book tour is giving
me the most joy right now, because it's so cool
to just like connect with other authors and connect with
(56:14):
readers and to just be out there meeting so many people.
When I was in La at Skylight Books, shout out
to Skylight Books. There are a bunch of people in
the audience who just happened to be in the bookstore
at the time and then just sat down and listened
for the talk and bought books, and they're like, Hey,
I just rolled up here, but this is really like
(56:37):
so like.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
That's I missed you in New York. That's rude.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Are you in New York? Yes, sick. I thought you
were in Los Angeles. I thought you're on the West sidey.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
I'm giving La vibes. No, I'm too depressed to be
in LA, clearly.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
But talking openly about depression. Is La? Is it not?
I don't know La culture me either.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Oh, you're going to be in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
I'll be in Atlanta. Sure, Okay, yes, love. I cannot
wait for the Atlanta stop. I cannot wait for the
Atlanta to stop. Yeah, it would be a nice little homecoming,
but in a different way. But yeah, I think book
tour is giving me joy. It's just so nice to
meet other people and to share the book with other
(57:25):
human beings, because writing a book is you're alone so much.
And so I have my road copy of my book
that people have been writing notes in. My nieces and
nephews all took a photo with the books. I printed
that out and that's in the book. I have a
photo of my agent in the book, so it's like, yeah,
(57:46):
it's just like a little scrap book. In the first
chapter of the book, I have this opening scene with
me my physiatrist, doctor Singh, and he's telling me about
the tumor, and so I went to his office and
he's signed a really lovely note for me in his
doctor handwriting, but right above that chapter. And so a
(58:08):
lot of people want me to read from that chapter.
So every time I open the book, I see his
handwriting and like those little moments of the tour, just this,
you know, this has given me joy. It's just so
nice to connect with other human beings, which you know
is the point of the book, you know, how do
we draw each other near and being collusion and being
(58:30):
community with each other?
Speaker 1 (58:32):
So yeah, well I'm really really damn proud of you,
and I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to like
look at your events in your in my mind, the
book came out this week. The book came out last month,
so duh.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
But two weeks ago, two weeks ago, last last day
of the month, so last month.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah, but I am like I need and thanks for
being so candid about the experience for you. I feel
very scene and like I can live to write another day.
And there is an end to this journey.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
It takes the time that it takes, Matt Johnson told me,
So that's how you know it's true.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
I'll quote you when I say that back quote, I'm
really struggling. This incredible writer. You know Jodyan Burrey. Have
you read her book?
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (59:23):
Yeah, I'll be like she told me the best advice.
It takes the time, it takes, it.
Speaker 2 (59:26):
Takes the time it takes. Hashtag mat Johnson so much.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
All right, Branda vischien fam I need you to go
follow Jodian everywhere. We're going to put her Instagram in
the show notes. It's at Jody Anne Beery and where else?
Speaker 2 (59:38):
What else?
Speaker 1 (59:38):
We got to put a link to the book. We
got to go pick up the book. How else can
we support you?
Speaker 2 (59:44):
Just? You know, so here the book with other people
talk about the book. I have a couple of folks
who come to lit Lounge. They all got the book,
and at lit Lounge they decided to do a little
book club, which I thought was just so cool. It's
just like, I know, it's like two people. There's like
a couple who knew each other, but the whole group
(01:00:06):
has never done anything together. And so what I heard
is that, you know, one person cooked, they ate good food.
They had a fire pit and just like talked through
the book and the conversations that they were having that
I heard about, were just like, man, this is the point.
This is the point because they're all sitting around. Yeah
(01:00:29):
they have different careers, but some overlap, and they're like, well,
what do we do? Well? What do we do? And
I'm like, wait, that's that's it. That's the point. Right,
You're in someone's backyard a fire pit and asking what
should we do? Like, that's where it starts. And so
I want people to have a relationship with the book
(01:00:51):
that does not exist online, that exists with other people.
I would I would love that even more than a fall.
Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Hell all right, y'all take it to the book club,
get the book and then have a conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And somebody needs to cook for y'all. Someone needs to cook.
There needs to be food.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
There, or I go to a restaurant. Whatever you want. Enjoy,
be merry, have convos.
Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
I'm such a pleasure. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Hope to see you here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yes, absolutely, okay, be a fam Thank you so much
for listening to this week's show. I want to shout
out to our production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our
fearless leader for Idea to launch productions. I want to
shout out my assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for
(01:01:42):
helping me put the show together. It is not a
one person project, as much as I have tried to
make it so these past ten years. I need help, y'all,
and thank goodness I've been able to put this team
around me to support me on this journey and to
y'all be a fam. I love you so so so
so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you sign
(01:02:03):
up to the newsletter to get all the latest updates
on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary celebrations to come,
and until next time, talk to you soon via buy
Hey ba fam, Let's be real for a second, and
y'all know I keep it a book. The job market
has been brutal, now not brutal trash, especially for women
(01:02:24):
of color. Over three hundred thousand of us have disappeared
from the workforce this year alone, and not by choice,
but because of layoffs, disappearing DEI programs, and stagnant wages
that keep cutting us out of opportunity. Our unemployment rate
has jumped to over seven percent, while our pay gap
continues to widen. I know all of that sounds dire.
(01:02:46):
But here's what I want y'all to know. You do
not have to wait for the system to save you.
That's exactly why I created the Mandy money Makers Group
coaching community. It is a coaching community that is built
for us by us. Inside the community, we're not just
talking about how to negotiate or to how to get
the job that you want. It's about finding purpose in
(01:03:07):
your career. It's about finding communities and others, feeling seen,
feeling heard, and also having a sounding board and a
mirror to reflect your own magic, your own sparkle right
back to yourself. In this community, you'll get group coaching
led by me, but you also get peer to peer
accountability with proven tools and resources that can help you
(01:03:29):
do what we have always done since rise. Even when
the odds are stacked against us, despite all the challenges,
we will rise. If you're interested in joining the Mandy
money Makers community and having that support to bolster you
and help you tap back into your magic so that
you can lead your career with intention and heart and
(01:03:50):
your own intuition, trusting that again, please join us. You
can find information in the show notes of today's episodes,
or go to MA many mooney dot com slash community.
That's Mandy m A n d I money dot com
slash community. I would love to see y'all there. Enrollment
is open, so please go check out mandymoney dot com
(01:04:14):
slash community today
Hey, ba fam, let's be real for a second, and
y'all know I keep it a book. The job market
has been brutal, now not brutal trash, especially for women
of color. Over three hundred thousand of us have disappeared
from the workforce this year alone, and not by choice,
but because of layoffs, disappearing DEI programs, and stagnant wages
(00:20):
that keep cutting us out of opportunity. Our unemployment rate
has jumped to over seven percent, while our pay gap
continues to widen. I know all of that sounds dire,
but here's what I want y'all to know. You do
not have to wait for the system to save you.
That's exactly why I created the Mandy money Makers Group
coaching community. It is a coaching community that is built
(00:41):
for us by us. Inside the community, we're not just
talking about how to negotiate or to how to get
the job that you want. It's about finding purpose in
your career. It's about finding communities and others, feeling seen,
feeling heard, and also having a sounding board and a
mirror to reflect your own magic, your own sparkle right
(01:03):
back to yourself. In this community, you'll get group coaching
led by me, but you also get peer to peer
accountability with proven tools and resources that can help you
do what we have always done since rise. Even when
the odds are stacked against us, despite all the challenges,
we will rise. If you're interested in joining the Mandy
(01:24):
money Makers community and having that support to bolster you
and help you tap back into your magic so that
you can lead your career with intention and heart and
your own intuition, trusting that again, please join us. You
can find information in the show notes of today's episodes
or go to mandymoney dot com slash community. That's Mandy
(01:47):
m A n d I money dot com slash community.
I would love to see y'all there. Enrollment is open,
so please go check out mandymoney dot com slash community. Today.
Hey Brown Ambition, Hey ba fam, I want to welcome
(02:07):
today's guest. She is a returning guest to the Brown
Ambition Studio and just one of those people who you
can't stop thinking about after you have been grace with
their presence, and that's certainly the case for me. Ever
since she was so gracious as to join me on
Brown Ambition. I want to say a couple of years ago,
but Jody Ane Beuret is back in the Brown Ambition
(02:30):
studio and she's here to talk about her brand new book.
It's called Authentic, The Myth of Bringing your Full Self
to Work. And I know as soon as people hear
this title, they're going to like, especially Brown Ambition listeners.
It's going to be like, Ooh, I'm sacked. Let's talk
about this shit right here. Jodian's a powerhouse, y'all. On
(02:50):
top of having a viral ted X talk about authenticity
at work, she's also a champion for health equity. Her
voice is really changing the w that we are talking
about race culture and what it actually means to be
authentic at work. Authentic for who? Authentic, Why? Authentic for
what purpose? These are all really important questions that she
(03:13):
challenges and asks herself and us in corporate America in
her new book. So I can't say enough about it.
I really enjoyed this book. It is unlike any book
that I've read recently, and it's a book I'm going
to open again and again when I sort of want to,
when you want to remind yourself that, oh, I'm actually
not alone, I'm not crazy. This is an experience that
(03:34):
we can share Jody, and I just want to say
thank you so much again for coming back to brad
Ambition and now you can give me my flowers. Thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Well, thank you so much Vandy for having me back.
It was a pleasure meaning you. I think that was
pandemic times that we did our podcast together. And so,
you know, I appreciate you so much for being on
this journey because you know, all of that ideation and
being in a community with other people and talking through ideas.
You know, this is how books come to be, you know,
(04:04):
doesn't just pop in your head. It comes from interactions
with others as well. And so, you know, thank you
for being part of the journey towards this book.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
And again congratulations. It's no small feet to have written
this book. And you're also you know, I think when
you first came on the podcast, we talked about your
your health journey. You what year was it you found
out that you had a tumor in your spinal cord?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yes, that was I was diagnosed March first, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Twenty eighteen, and you went through a really risky surgery.
You talked to me about going skiing.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Before the surgery, snowboarding.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Snowboard? Oh sorry, what's your with your Jamaican roots? Like, yes,
it makes sense obvious.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, a Jamaican someone born in Jamaica and raised in
New York City goes snowboard once a week in the
winter time. Yeah, that is a logical progression of activity.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But you were already working in the DEI space even
before you know you face this health this health challenge
doesn't seem like a big enough word. Crisis to me
is like cis right, and even though it was successfully removed,
you are still left with chronic pain that that started
(05:29):
to impact you and impact you at work. You talk
so the idea of authenticity. I think, especially with women
of color, you think about hair style and well, like
we can't take our skin off, but maybe in the
actual age our skin our upbringing, our culture, our our tone,
our language, all of that. But you also have this
(05:52):
additional layer of I know, I don't know how you
would describe it, chronic pain disability. You have this physical
condition now that is also a layer that you bring.
Can you talk about you know, kind of thinking about
as you talk about in the book, like whether or
not to disclose that you have chronic pain and that
(06:12):
you may need accommodations in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Well thank you so much for
that setup. So I do identify as a disabled person.
My mom hates when I say that. I love calling
myself disabled. I love being disabled in terms of like
having that disability identity. What does it mean to be
a part of that community and what does it mean
(06:38):
to have, you know, disability change how you see the world,
how you articulate your arguments, the ways you see institutions,
the way you see communities, and how you engage with people,
places and spaces. And so I very much feel confident in,
you know, declaring and affirming my disability identity. And so
(07:02):
what's interesting though, is after surgery and I was I
was out of work for four months. I was on
a four month with disability leave, which was just more
time than I was supposed to have and still not
enough time for kind of like the emotional processing of
(07:26):
what does it mean to go through a life changing
diagnosis and surgery? And so that completely changed my body,
and so I was heavily using a cane still when
I went back to work. I went back to work
maybe a month after I started driving again, and I
used a cane intermittently for about two years, and I
(07:48):
think three years I used a wheelchair service in airports
because it just like couldn't make it through an airport
without any type of support. And so I all that
to say that there's being disabled in a way that
is legible to other people. So if you are a
(08:09):
person who has a kne you are disabled in a
way that you do not have to express, you do
not have to articulate. There's a tipping point though where
some people, because of my age as well, I was
diagnosed with when I was thirty one, a few days
before my thirty second birthday, where people might not see
(08:31):
you as a disabled person but as someone who is
recovering from surgery. So if you get in a little
accident and you're in crutches, you have a disability, but
maybe you don't have a disabled identity, and people do
not perceive disability identity on you. You're recovering, you're an
(08:53):
injured athlete. So there was a sense where I'm like, Okay,
everyone sees that I'm disabled, right, I'm even coming to
my own identity as a disabled person. And so when
I no longer had the visual que of disability when
I was no longer using my cane than to other people,
I was someone who was not disabled. I was recovered,
(09:17):
and so it was very easy for them all that
accommodating quote unquote that they did, all that support that
they provided me within the workplace, that started to fade
once they were no longer visually reminded that I am
not the person that you knew before, or I am
(09:38):
not I don't move in spaces and I don't need
the same things as other people in the workplace. And
so I think for me, because I was reading so
much about disability identity and I was really relying on
the scholarship of crypt theorists and other disability scholars, particularly
(09:58):
black and brown disabilities, that I was totally enthralled and
just embracing disability as an identity. And so for me personally,
I had very little kind of ooh, I don't know
if I should say about the fact that I was disabled.
I remember I had a job interview and it was
(10:20):
my first time leaving nonprofits and going into the startup
world and the COO during the interview, Actually, when I
went to that interview, I did not need my cane
because I knew the layout at the office a little bit.
I didn't need the cane, but I brought it anyway
because I wanted to visibly signal that, hey, you not
(10:41):
this is we're going to talk about this, right, so
that when she had asked me, you know, if I
felt that I was prepared to handle kind of the
stress and chaos at the startup world, I looked straight up.
I looked at her, and I was like, so I
thought I was going to die last year. There's nothing
that's going to happen here that is more stressful than that.
(11:02):
So when it came to asking for quote unquote asking
for accommodation, I don't even know if I did that
as much because I had the visual Q. But when
I didn't have the visual Q, I had to keep affirming, Hey,
I have a disability. I just came back from a flight.
I'm not going to Los Angeles tomorrow. I'm not doing that.
(11:25):
I'm not needed there and I physically cannot do it.
And so when I said that, I was like, oh, yeah,
I don't need to go on this trip. It was
a problem. But then when I asserted my disability, then
she backed off. The CEO of the company that I
was working for at the time, and so I think
for me, one of the concepts that I found and
(11:47):
researching the book is called access fevering. It was coined
by a disability a crypt theorist Jay Logan smiggles, and
he talks about the ways that we have to steal
access for ourselves. And so I think, for me, my
priority and my kind of way of being is to
(12:07):
steal the access did I need. So I don't be
asking for no accommodations. I take my accommodations. I meet
my access needs by any means necessary. And for me,
as someone who has no problem being open about my disability,
I try to steal access for other people.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Hey, ba, fam, we got to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. You know,
it was interesting in the book too to hear about
your different experiences with that physical disability versus the mental
health challenges you were having. So when you had depression
and you you were, like you said, you know, you
were talking about Francis at work and you were being
(12:49):
authentic and sharing that, and then it started to make
them afraid that it was potentially a liability for the company.
This was like, Yeah, classic example of like the double
edged sword of authenticity in a way, especially when you're
you know, with a manager or someone in a power
(13:10):
position of power over you that everything seems good and
they're accepting of it, and then you get a note
from HR, yeah, reiterating that, Oh, we just want to
remind you you are required to travel thirty percent of
your of the year. You know, I just want to
be sure you're committed to that. Yeah, And can you
talk about can you talk about what that experience was?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Like?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I want to also read this, this quick little excerpt
from the book where you're talking.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Please do Do you want to read it first?
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, I want to read it. It says, and you
call it, you call the the company, the Org, the
ORGS insistence on meetings, documents, and medical surveillance dizzied into
such a spectacle the people I thought saw me couldn't
any longer. My dear colleague, whom I was am slash
am quite fond of, was still HR. I became a
(14:02):
problem to handle. Policy compliance eclipsed my authority to define
my needs. I was too honest, too visible, too authentic.
I was depressed, but they wanted me depressed. On paper.
I felt judged. I felt marked, not as we have
depression crossed out liability. I never talked about Francis again.
(14:24):
That made me so sad.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
No, wait, why am I getting emotional? I hate crying
when you have under eye eyeliner on.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Another liability.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Exactly, that's another liability. Wow, I didn't know I was
going to get emotional about that. Depression is the worst.
When you're battling depression with intense feelings of suicidality, it's tough.
(15:04):
During that time, I was stealing a lot of access
for myself. So the ORG had a work from home
policy that I think was appropriate for any workplace where
you can work remotely. If you worked in the office, great,
If you didn't work in the office, you didn't work
in office. It was a global health organization, so by
(15:25):
the fact that I was headquartered here in Seattle, everybody
worked remotely because all of our projects were in Southern Africa.
And so there were a lot of times where I
would get ready and get dressed to go to work
and then I would just not do that, like I
just couldn't hide Francis that day, and I would just
work from home. And so there are parts of that
that were incredibly helpful. That I was able to not
(15:49):
have to perform and I could just focus on my work,
which was an important outlet for me to busy my mind.
But I didn't have to deal with that kind of
emotional labor of being face to face with other people.
And then there were times where being home alone felt
really dangerous, and so I would go to the office
(16:11):
and I needed to wear that mask. And also I
just needed to be the version of myself who wasn't
speaking through Francis right, that I can sit alongside Francis
and not necessarily see ourselves as fully embodied, which was
also very helpful because my coworkers saw that I was struggling,
and I was able to get a couple of folks
(16:31):
who were in collusion for my survival. Will say that.
So I went to Malawi on a business trip and
it was it was really really challenging. I've been in
(16:56):
Allowi so many times and I never had a trip
to Mali. We like that, and I was holding on
by a fucking thread. So when I came back, I
was like very chipper about it. I was like, oh, yeah,
I'm ALLOWI was great. Francis was there, FYI, I cannot
(17:22):
travel until I get this sorted out. I said it
very casually, very you know, and I didn't know that
that conversation would go anywhere else. Also, I wasn't scheduled
to travel. There was nothing on my schedule that I
(17:42):
would be traveling again. But I was just kind of saying, like, listen,
I'm definitely not I don't know what's going on, but
I'm definitely not traveling until I can get my mental
health stabilized. That ended up escalating to HR without my knowledge,
and then I felt the hammer of the entire HR
system making sure that I would be traveling, which again
(18:03):
there was no traveling schedule. And so when I felt
these kind of interpersonal relationships revealed themselves as their true nature,
which is, we have an institutional relationship, we have a
transactional relationship. I am an employee of this place. That
(18:29):
showed me how quickly all that goodwill, all that you know,
love and support can just fall apart. And now my
livelihood is potentially at stake because what they wanted me
to do I was not going to do. And so
it just was very interesting about how that same organization
(18:49):
then handled my tumor diagnosis handled that same person who
was depressed in suicidal how it handled someone with a cane.
These are both disabling aspects of my ability to work
here and do my work. Is it not? If anything,
(19:10):
having such an acute level of depression was more disabling
to my day to day life than me you know,
walking using a cane. But there was just so much
It was so much easier to support me when the thing,
the disability was visible, I think maybe more accessible for
(19:33):
people to understand. Yeah, it was really tough.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's still this disc and I'm so sorry that I
had to go back to that chapter and I was like,
is she still working at the same place? Because when
you had the surgery, it was like they pulled that.
You know, you didn't have enough PTO, You needed more
time off, you didn't have enough time off. Your company
creates this pool where people can donate their PTO. I've
(20:01):
seen how incredible those types of pools are, by the way,
because my sister has had to tap that multiple times
for health issues. And I was always so amazed and
love that companies would even do such a thing and
so compassionate and you know, and let's rally around Jodyann,
which is what you deserved in that moment. But there's
this discomfort with depression that sticking to it like, yeah,
(20:23):
we don't know and it and and I think this
is one of those times where being authentic and actually
sharing that I think can be really helpful because anyone
who's listening, who's in a position where they manage, they
are managing people or working with people, to think about
(20:45):
how you would how you would handle someone like yourself,
like Jodianne, if if you were on their team, how
what what would you say? What would you do? Would
you know what to do? Would you know how to
be compassionate? And what they would need to support them
in that time? And if the answer is I'm not sure,
then that's a question to keep asking and to create
(21:05):
an answer to need leaders who, especially in this day
and age, how commons depression especially it was a pandemic. Uh,
we should probably have a plan for this, And yeah,
I that must have created such a and help You
(21:26):
didn't stay there very much longer?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But no, And of all the jobs I've had, I
was there the longest. But I think even if everything
was if I didn't have those negatives, I didn't leave
because of that. I left because, you know, to the
point of being even talking about tremain Leed's book and
his experience, I went through a massive health crisis that
(21:51):
changed how I saw myself. In order to stay alive,
to still be here, I had to change my life.
I could not fit this new version of myself into
the routines of my life that I had before. And
so a big part of that was leaving the comfort
of this job that I knew because I had so
(22:13):
much social capital, that would be the ideal place for
me as I was navigating you know, this post operative
recovery and you know, shifting of my own self concept,
that was the best place for me to work. But
I could not be the same, be a different person
in the same setting. So that's really why I left.
(22:35):
But I think because of that experience. You know, there's
a there's a line in the book that people have
picked up on as they've been reading it and talking
to me about it, where I say, I'm not a worker,
I'm a person at work. And it was because of
my disability experience, because I went through that that even
when I went on to manage other people, I don't
(22:58):
need a checklist that says, what do you do when
your report has someone who passes away but they're not
a close family member. What do you do when you
know you're a coworker, your report needs this thing, but
there is no policy in place of how to get
them that thing. My report is a person, and so
(23:23):
I treat them like a person and we figure it out.
And so in a lot of ways, they're regardless of
whatever the policies are within the institution, within the workplace.
As a people manager, you can still access on their behalf. Yeah,
you gotta go do this thing, you gotta go do that. Cool.
(23:43):
I'm not telling nobody that, like, go do what you
gotta do, right, you know, if I'm working with an
independent contractor and there's no built PTO for them, yeah,
take the rest of the week off and build hours.
You know. So, what are ways that we can steal access?
What are ways that we can And I love the
(24:05):
idea of thievery. I love the idea of stealing because
that's the thing that managers and companies are so afraid of.
That's why they make accommodations processes so hostile, because they're
trying to weed out people who are quote unquote gaming
the system, quote unquote abusing the system. There's this woman
(24:26):
because I was talking about this on LinkedIn and she
was like, you know, some of these people, they're like
children and they want to take a whole day off
because they have a hangnail. And what's it to you?
Do I not have PSI, Oh, it doesn't matter what
I do during that like to.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Be a woman of color and to need additional accommodations,
it just feeds into that whole idea of us being
leeches on society and you know, resource sucking. I mean,
it's this whole narrative, this toxic narrative that we're in
now that's and free to persistent proliferate. That makes me
really worry. I mean I've been worried, but like even
(25:06):
more worried for you know, BIPOC people at work, women
of color like who are dealing with something and are
too afraid that that may make them a target. I
want to read this other little excerpt from the book.
I didn't take note of chapter titles or page numbers,
(25:27):
but this.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Is no perfect that's the galley, so who knows if
it's still in the final.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Honest, yeah, I was like that's a type of wait,
this is a galley. Yeah, I love it all right.
In this excerpt, you say my manager knew about my
spinal cord injury. But when you're black, or a woman
or fill in the blank with inconsistent access needs, she
treated me like I was either lying, lazy, or just
being difficult. I didn't look broken enough for accommodations. I
(25:55):
didn't feel broken enough to insist. I stood on stages
in pain, sat in hours long meetings in pain, traveled
without notice in pain, and stayed quiet in pain until
I couldn't. I need this because of my disability. I
can't do that because of my disability. My manager apologized
(26:16):
one week, only to push back the next. It was
a boom bus cycle of disregard. I read that because
I mean, I do career coaching, right, and I have
coached women who are dealing with this exact same scenario,
and it's an impossible, like an almost impossible situation. And
(26:39):
I wanted to ask, now, how you don't currently like
you worked for a big corporation in Seattle, one of
the big ones, right, and since then you've carved out
this career for yourself as a speaker and an author
and a writer. Do you ever feel like there's a
place where you could find in corporate or in a
(27:00):
traditional role where you could be comfortable bringing all the
layers of yourself today as a version of yourself as
you are. I'm asking that because I asked myself that question. Yeah,
I don't know. If I could, it would take a
really special place.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, I mean no, I don't know, and I don't
even know if I'm looking for that. I think if
I were ever to go back to traditional work what.
I don't know if this book disqualifies me. I don't
know if this book makes me unemployable real talk?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
You mean your book about being authentic? Have you authentic?
Girl Boss? Too close to the sun.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
That's my fear too.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I don't know if this podcast makes me employable?
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah certainly.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Not, because girl, I don't know if you so today
literally the episode aired on Brown Ambition, where it's me
opening taking off the mask of depression to my audience
and part of and the huge reason why I did
that is because I just felt like a liar and
(28:08):
I hated it because I'm not a liar. I don't,
I I have I'm always authentic. But I hadn't up
I hadn't updated my my own iOS to the people. Yeah,
I you know, like there's a version of me that has,
you know, has emerged the past couple of years. I
just haven't updated my iOS. It wasn't matching the tone,
(28:29):
the brand, the the persona that was true to.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Me a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I just needed to update them. You know, here's a
little iOS update. I just wanted to let you know, Yeah,
you can opt down or you can like get on
board and the vulnerability hangover afterward.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Like, thank god I have Jodianne to talk to me
about this decision.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
You know, I'll say this, whether I did think about that,
does writing a book? Does saying the things that I
want to say make me unemployable? And then a really
good friend of mine reminded me that capitalism eats itself right.
You can have books that are critiquing capitalism, that are
critiquing Amazon, and it could be the number one book
(29:15):
on Amazon. So it's just like, like, I'm not too
too worried about that. But you know, I had a
friend text me a couple of years ago who he
found some job opening somewhere and he's like, man, Jodyanne,
like I work here, I can connect you. I saw
this job posting and I'm like, wow, this company could
(29:36):
really use a leader like Jodianne. And I texted back
as a baby, I work for myself. Now, here's what
the real question is, does Jodianne need a company like this?
And so I'm not really looking for a place where
I can bring my full authentic self to work. That's
just a narrative that I don't subscribe to, you know.
(29:58):
Right now, my priorities like can I if I go
back to traditional work, not even that. The thing that
needs to solve for is health insurance. I need better,
more affordable health insurance and in America, because we only
save people lives that can if it can make companies money,
(30:21):
it is really difficult to be a full time artist
and stay alive. And so that's what I'm solving for.
And so if I work anywhere, I'm trying to figure
out what the health insurance policy is looking like, I'm
trying to figure out how much you're gonna pay me.
I'm trying to carve out some type of work that
makes me feel good about myself. That's in alignment with
(30:45):
my values, that allows me to develop X, Y and
Z skills. And I'm potentially looking for I'm not really
looking for a place where I can quote unquote be
my whole self.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Heyba fam, We're going to take a quick break, break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. Yeah, there's
a part in your book that really resonated. I mean,
so much of it resonated with me. But you so
in terms of like I feel very similar to you,
I'm not. I wouldn't be naive enough to think that
(31:18):
I could really do that. You know, I'm not that age.
But there was a time where I was that naive.
Oh bless her, And I was very much like this
woman in your book that you talk about. You're at
you're at a startup. You're you're working in the DEI
kind of space at the startup, and you're on stage
and you're obviously a black woman. And there's someone in
(31:39):
the audience who comes up to another black woman and
she's like starry eyed, like Jody Hann's there, it must
be great for us, And you look at her and
you're you're trying to like convey the get out stare
like yes, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Are you sure?
Speaker 1 (31:57):
And then and then soon enough you see her at
the company. She's gotten a job, and you kind of
have this and you have this like back and forth
on the phone voice notes where she's like yeah girl,
and you're in Europe. You apologize for like not I
guess what, like not warning her more effusively. But she's like,
in that frame of mind, I wouldn't have listened. I
(32:19):
was exactly like her, walking my starry eyed self into
like the last major corporation I worked with, and I'll
never forget that, you know. And I was being trotted
out on a virtual stages as during the pandemic, trotted
out on the I was in a very public facing
persona role to be like consumer facing too, you know.
(32:41):
And I was hired the Sun in the winter of
twenty twenty sorry, yeah, twenty twenty one, so post everyone
trying to find their black unicorn woman to represent the brand,
right should have known whatever didn't. And there was two
women of color, two black women who like just were like, oh,
I'd love to put time in your calendar to get
to know you, and one in particular was like, girl,
(33:04):
this is not what you think it is. And I
remember leaving that call like, wow, misery loves company. Some
people are just so native, doesn't she know I'm different
and special?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, and this is I'm.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Going to change the shit. And meanwhile completely and was
out on my ass like just a few months later.
And so this part where you say, when you realize,
you say the startup want in my black face, my
black experience, my black insights, my black abundance, my black
professional network to evade criticism for being yet another company
built for white women, by white women. But the visibility
(33:39):
imposed on me aligned with my desires to advance my career.
Nonprofits didn't pay as well or offer enough public exposure.
And you use an expression we're going to talk about.
I took a sabbatical gaze in pursuit of the kind
of professional visibility I wanted that that was so real,
you know, because I wanted that damn job Ooh it
(34:01):
felt good to be chosen for that. It felt like
big brand, big money, big opportunity. The ego was purring.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Was being set up to fail. And so I want
to stop there and ask you to talk about the
sabbatical gaze and what that means and where that comes
into play in your career.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, so one, apologies for the long care happening outside
my door. I can't hear it. Oh okay? Am I
the only one? Okay, if you can't hear it, then
I'll stop worrying about it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Riverside and Zoom are very good about like, Okay, don't worry.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I can't, okay, because I've been sitting here freaking out.
So the sabbatical gaze is my riffing and trying to
think with my kind of first intellectual hero Bell Hooks.
And so, in one of her books, Black Looks, Race
and Representation, she talks about the oppositional gaze, and she
(35:03):
interrogates black women's looking relationships with pop culture. What are
the ways that we have to be critical spectators because
there are the dominant narratives don't exist to affirm us.
So there's this way that we have to kind of
ignore our own identities and ignore everything that we know
(35:25):
to enjoy this movie, right, to watch, to watch this
TV show, to listen to this song. And so in
the chapter where I'm talking about this, I mentioned this
Nike commercial that Serena Williams had narrated, and I think,
like a lot of black women, we feel very connected
to Serena Williams because she is the image of black excellence.
(35:48):
But her excellence is not enough to protect her professionally.
It's not enough to protect her in terms of her
own life, you know, even going through a major health crisis.
And I'm like, well, Serena Williams almost died during childbearing,
and her excellence and her money and her status didn't
protect her. So what hope do we have? And so
(36:08):
I'm so emotional about them. I could watch that commercial
right now and cry. But Alicia Montano, who's a middle
distance runner, I believe, a world champion Olympian. She was
branded as the pregnant Runner because she competed twice pregnant,
once when she was like eight months pregnant too, so
she just got dubbed the pregnant Runner. She was also
(36:30):
sponsored by Nike. She came out with The New York
Times op ed and many many documentary and started this
campaign called Dream hashtag Dream Maternity, and she talks about
the ways that as a Nike sponsored athlete, when you
are Even though she was celebrated for being pregnant, she
got all, the visibility for being pregnant, her pregnancy was
(36:53):
not supported. Nike and Olympic Committee do not pay athletes
who are pregnant postpartum. If you are not racing, you
do not get paid and you do not get health insurance.
And so Alison Felix, one of our most decorated track Olympians,
also talked about the ways that she was not paid
(37:13):
and didn't have health insurance when she was pregnant with
her child. And so I had a feeling about that.
It's Nike. Why do I think Nike's out here standing
for women and girls? Despite the Serena Williams of it all,
despite the message of it all, there are ways that
we can just get lulled into the seduction of feeling
(37:34):
so seen by these images that we don't want to look.
And so maybe we clock the criticism, we clock the questions,
and so what are ways that we are intentionally not
doing that work? And so we take this kind of sabbatical.
I see it, I could do it. I see the analysis.
(37:57):
I don't want to engage, I don't want to look.
I want the pleasure of feeling seen. And so what
happens though, when you take that rest is other people
are looking at you. So I'm here pursuing the things
that I want to pursue professionally, and other black women
are looking at me thinking that if Jodiane is here,
(38:18):
then this is a safe place. And it's not enough
for me to be safe. It's not enough for me
to get what I want from this particular company. If
that means that I'm hurting other black women, that hurts me.
And so just kind of pushing back on myself for
the ways that we take these sabbatical gazes and we
(38:41):
don't want to engage. It corrupts us in the type
of way.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Well, my heart is like I mean, to your own
point in the book, you talk about how at the
end of the day, it's capitalism that's the enemy. It's
these corporations. It's not like you, Jodyanne, would be responsible
for every black woman who like that's the weight of
being the only one or if you only different, right
(39:09):
that you have to sort of release yourself of that pressure.
I know you know that and all that.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
But yeah, I mean, it's not that I feel pressure.
It's am I walking in alignment with my own values?
Am I moving in a way that I feel good
about that is also authenticity, and so my pursuit for
visibility is yes, true, But what am I willing to
sacrifice because what happened to me at that job is
(39:35):
that I stood in this in between. I'm representing an institution,
but I also represent this community. And so if I
do something right at the company, I'm hurting people that
I care about. And if I try to steal access,
if I try to, you know, create spaces for them,
then I'm compromising my standing at the company. And so
(39:58):
it's about just not to say that there's a right
way to decide I was out of alignment with the
way that I wanted to move.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Asking yourself that question, like, am I in alignment? It
can be really scary, especially in a time like this.
Some people who are out of alignment don't have the
option of getting in alignment, you know, if that means
quitting and finding a new opportunity. You can't always plan that.
It can be a really it can be isolating, kind
(40:31):
of depressing place to be. What would you say to
a woman who's listening and then feeling that way.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, I mean it's a nice say this. In the book.
Several times I'm not telling you to quit your job.
That's not my job. I'm laying out my own experiences,
experience of other people. I'm laying out research and cultural commentary,
all of these things, and you, I hope it's confronting,
and then you decide, however, you decide of the ways
(41:01):
that you want to move after that, I would say
to look at the ways that you're defining status and
success and if maybe that's a way that is driving
you to make decisions that are harmful to your health,
well being, self concept, et cetera. Because we can even
(41:22):
see in this kind of labor movement surge that's been happening,
you know, since the pandemic with a great you know,
resignation and all the kind of worker actions that have
happened since, is that what I have found is that
people who have the most resources feel like they have
the most risks. They can't lose that big job at
(41:45):
that big corporation. That's you know, sinking them into a deeper,
deeper depression every day. I know a lot of people
who are very well educated, very highly paid, and they
make decisions in ways that you think that if they
didn't have this job, they'd be on the Street tomorrow.
(42:07):
So I would just kind of challenge that that there
is more room to make changes in our lives than
we think, because I feel like the people who take
the most risk are the people who have the least
amount of resources, and often they're advocating on for all
(42:28):
workers in a way that we eventually benefit. And so,
as someone who lives in Seattle, I've never worked at Amazon.
I've interviewed, but I've never worked there. But the ways
that Amazon treats its warehouse workers are structurally very similar
to the way that they treat black and brown people
who work at headquarters. And so if the office workers
(42:51):
and the warehouse workers were in collusion in some way,
maybe there's a larger movement for workers' rights that could
on the horizon for us. Those are big macro things,
you know. If I'm talking to an individual person about
their individual problem, I would just encourage them to really
(43:11):
survey their lives and survey the decisions that they can make,
and to see what are ways that we can better
ensure our health and well being. I don't know what
that looks like. You know, our jobs are also tied
to health insurance. It's the way that we can take
(43:31):
care of ourselves the way that we take care of
our families, and for a lot of black and brown communities,
we're not just taking care of the people in our
household and so and especially during the time when black
women are being so unlawfully and morally targeted and our
livelihoods and survival are on the line, and there's a
(43:53):
not insignificant portion of the country that are celebrating that,
I think the calculus just looks different. So I would say,
think about your choices and know that you cannot make
a bad choice. You can't make a bad decision.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And decisions don't have to be permanent either, absolutely not
an idea of permanent absolutely not scovering yea, yeah, yeah.
I think what I enjoy about your book too is
it's not like you say, you're not giving one clear path,
but it is. It is a challenge and a call
to action to just like examine how you're moving and
(44:39):
and to not I feel like to not have the
illusion that what we do at work doesn't impact our
well being. Overall that being said, I feel like the
freedom of just like not like disassociating, but looking at
your the way who you are at work, A little
(45:00):
bit different than where you are outside of work can
be helpful. I guess you'd call that code switching, but
maybe not looking. Do you think that people? Do you
think that it's too risky to look for community, I
know community and like looking for to be seen and
(45:20):
to like have build those relationships. Do you think it's
in this current climate too fraught, too risky to open
up to colleagues at work at a time like this,
and that we should be looking, you know, more to
spaces like this, you know, to one another, to peers
outside where you're not where, yeah, where it's maybe a
(45:43):
little bit safer to be your be yourself honestly.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
And this is the biggest driver of the book is
where are we gathering and how we build relationships and
community beyond the institutional gaze. There's so much of our
relationship building that is so surveilled within the workplace. Even
employee resource groups as like such a wonderful, beautiful space
to find other people who are similar to you, have
(46:11):
similar experiences, you know, have similar values to you. That's
also an incredibly surveilled environment. And there are limitations on
what you can do together. And so I'm a firm
believer in Whisper and Whisper networks in building relationships outside
(46:33):
of work. You can build professional relationships that aren't necessarily
within your organizational reporting lines. And so I think the
biggest thing for us, you know, in this new kind
of authoritarianism and fascist regime, is to find communities and
building strong communities that are not surveiled. That is the
(46:58):
foundation of of whatever is going to come next. And
so that was a challenge for me, especially coming out
of the pandemic, especially coming after a major health crisis
where a lot of the relationships that I had did
not exist anymore after I got out of the hospital,
which is like a whole other conversation for a whole
other podcast, but my whole entire social world fell apart
(47:23):
than the pandemic. Then I don't work anywhere, you know,
I don't have people that I get to see every day.
And so even in the and then writing a book
makes you really isolated. And so even the process of
writing this book, I was like, girl, where are your people?
When shit goes down? Where are you going? Who has
(47:44):
your back? Who's back do you have? You know? And
so that has pushed me to create with other people
you know a big I do this reading series in
Seattle now called Lounge. The people's art and the people
that I'm working with we used to work together at
(48:05):
a company, right, But I was like, wait, you know
how I work. I know how you work. Hey, let's
do something for the people. And even through building lit lounge,
building that community of just so many beautiful black and
brown people who want to spend a Friday night, you know,
listening to literature, that is the foundation of whatever could
(48:25):
come next. And so I would just encourage people to
build and invest in your social worlds because then the
multiplier effects of that are just limitless.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
And like your physical social world, not the parasocial like
the social media, which has place, right.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
It has its place, But you got to know people,
like you got to know somebody who's going to drive
soup to your house, right, You got to know somebody
that you know when they're having a tough time, you're
dropping everything to go and support them, like deep, deep,
deep community. That's not a like on Instagram. What are
(49:11):
ways that we're showing up Because when the risk is high,
which it is high, incredibly high for us. Now, we
need those people.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
I wish we had more time. Well, we do have
more time. I mean, I think, you know, being clear
across the other side of the world. Remind me how
the hell'd you end up in Seattle again?
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Was it school child? No, I came here. I came
here after I got my master's screen public health, and
I took a job out here at the Org and
I worked there for almost five years and I just
haven't left. Seattle is a hard place to be in,
but it's a really difficult place to leave.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Interesting, okay, yeah, kind of suck you in. What is it?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
You know, very moderate weather. You know, I can get
to the mountains within an hour and a half. No
one looks nice here, so just wear sweatpants every day.
I like composting. We're mail in only Dallot State, So
I like voting. You know. It don't take me longer
than fifteen minutes to drive anywhere. It's just a very
(50:22):
convenient place. But it's so white. It is suffocatingly white.
And so that's why I love lit Lounge because at
least I get to see a bunch of black and
brown people.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I love that for you too. And also my favorite,
one of my favorite dance clubs in the city was
like on East fourth Street. It was called lit Lounge.
It's no longer with us, But.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Wait, is that what it was called? It louds that's
a lit lounge. Oh my god, I love that.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
And I was there Friday and Saturday night every weekend
during a very particular time in my life. Yeah, twenty
eleven through twenty about fourteen. I can't believe I was outside,
like old enough to know a club that's no longer
open in New York.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
You're so funny. Let me tell you what I was
in New York in my twenties. I would leave my
house at midnight to go club. That is oh my god.
I still want to do that.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
But you have breakfast when you get home, because it's
like six four six.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
For all the twenty somethings be outside, yo, have fun,
have so much fun.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Because now I mean, but you could still I mean
you could still be there. You don't got no kids.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
I mean yeah, but I'll be wearing sneakers.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
Insomnia. Are you still dealing with insomnia or no?
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, I'm always doing I'm like to work.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I got sleep apnea, so I'm not sleeping anyway. I
might as well go.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
To the go.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
But I got these kids at home.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
I can't do it. But you know, it was just
me and my thoughts.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Throw out where we're not that old, Jodi am. We
can't be like enjoy your youth.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
No, I'm still out here. Okay, I'm outside.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
I've had to reckon with being the suburban housewife that
like Chapel Roone makes fun of and all her music,
and I'd be like jamming to her songs and be like,
oh no.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
I only known in name only. I don't know anything
about this individual.
Speaker 1 (52:27):
Oh her music, it's good, little, it's my little. I
think some people they have like their uh their what
you call it, like guilty white girl, white girl music, guilty, pleasure, chopel,
a little bit of mine.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
I'm still listening to the nineties R and B child
like whatever music was popping when I was in high
school in college. I still listen to that.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
I love. Okay, that's probably a healthy replace team. What
do you mean I'm not being I'm not feeling seen
by like a twenty four year old white woman from
Saint Louis like weird, so weird.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
But I love that for you. I do love that
for you. I am on the dochi train. So I
have updated, so it's like me too.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
I've seen her in a week in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Could I tell you when I texted my nieces Seattle, Yes,
yes she is. Thank god is that would have traveled? Yes,
she is. For her, I actually had tickets for Infinity
Song that night, and so Infinity Song I already had
those tickets, but then Doci. I was like, I'm so
sorry Infinity Song. I wanted to rock what you loved
that little uh it's like a black sibling, a yacht
(53:39):
rock group. Yes, love them down. But Doci's come the
same night, and I just it's one of my life
goals to see DOCI life.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
So we're both Doughchi stands okay connect.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, I'm super excited. I was when I first heard
of music. I texted my nieces there in their twenties,
and I was like, hey, what do we think about Doci.
And then a couple of weeks later when I talked
to them, they're like, yeah, when we saw that, we're like, yo, Auntie,
Jody's gone. She's gone. And I was gone because once
I started learning about Don't Chi, I'm gone. I'm with it.
(54:13):
I'm in the swamp baby, let's do this.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
I'm in the swamp. I'm like boiled peanuts. I know
what boiled peanuts are. I grew up in Georgia.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
I love that. For you, I don't, but I'm just
here for it.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
It's disgusting, is what they are. I don't fuck with
boiled peanuts.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
Gross.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
They sell them in plastic sacks on the highway. That's
what I know. On the way to Panama City for vacation,
you would see a boiled peanuts stand and they would
just be slimy. I mean, imagine a peanut and water
Costic as a child with the dianut skins getting sloughed off,
even the soft little.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
But I as a child with diaspora. I support street food.
I love food at the start of the road. I
think that's been the backbone of our survival.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Yeah, I'll take a tomato. I'll take a you know,
a meat pie. I'll take a little pasto. We're in
d r but no, noo peanuts.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
All right, Well, we still love you, Doc, and we'll
be there at the concert.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
What else is making you smile and bringing your joy
these days? Because we talk heavy.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Besides DOCI put the mother money and my motherfucking ha. Yes,
long as you bitches. What's up? It's do chi bitch Okay. Anyway,
let's people.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Understand having kids, I can't listen to her in the
car like I want to, oh to, I'll be making
up errands just to listen to the blast man.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
What's gonna be joy? I'm in the middle of books
for and.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Are you able to travel a lot? Are you gonna
be coming.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
Or I've been doing some traveling. I just came back
from my New York event, and to just have that
kind of home coming, Oh, bring out about it. Yeah.
So I think being on a book tour is giving
me the most joy right now, because it's so cool
to just like connect with other authors and connect with
(56:14):
readers and to just be out there meeting so many people.
When I was in La at Skylight Books, shout out
to Skylight Books. There are a bunch of people in
the audience who just happened to be in the bookstore
at the time and then just sat down and listened
for the talk and bought books, and they're like, Hey,
I just rolled up here, but this is really like
(56:37):
so like.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
That's I missed you in New York. That's rude.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Are you in New York? Yes, sick. I thought you
were in Los Angeles. I thought you're on the West sidey.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
I'm giving La vibes. No, I'm too depressed to be
in LA, clearly.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
But talking openly about depression. Is La? Is it not?
I don't know La culture me either.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Oh, you're going to be in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
I'll be in Atlanta. Sure, Okay, yes, love. I cannot
wait for the Atlanta stop. I cannot wait for the
Atlanta to stop. Yeah, it would be a nice little homecoming,
but in a different way. But yeah, I think book
tour is giving me joy. It's just so nice to
meet other people and to share the book with other
(57:25):
human beings, because writing a book is you're alone so much.
And so I have my road copy of my book
that people have been writing notes in. My nieces and
nephews all took a photo with the books. I printed
that out and that's in the book. I have a
photo of my agent in the book, so it's like, yeah,
(57:46):
it's just like a little scrap book. In the first
chapter of the book, I have this opening scene with
me my physiatrist, doctor Singh, and he's telling me about
the tumor, and so I went to his office and
he's signed a really lovely note for me in his
doctor handwriting, but right above that chapter. And so a
(58:08):
lot of people want me to read from that chapter.
So every time I open the book, I see his
handwriting and like those little moments of the tour, just this,
you know, this has given me joy. It's just so
nice to connect with other human beings, which you know
is the point of the book, you know, how do
we draw each other near and being collusion and being
(58:30):
community with each other?
Speaker 1 (58:32):
So yeah, well I'm really really damn proud of you,
and I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to like
look at your events in your in my mind, the
book came out this week. The book came out last month,
so duh.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
But two weeks ago, two weeks ago, last last day
of the month, so last month.
Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah, but I am like I need and thanks for
being so candid about the experience for you. I feel
very scene and like I can live to write another day.
And there is an end to this journey.
Speaker 2 (59:07):
It takes the time that it takes, Matt Johnson told me,
So that's how you know it's true.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
I'll quote you when I say that back quote, I'm
really struggling. This incredible writer. You know Jodyan Burrey. Have
you read her book?
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (59:23):
Yeah, I'll be like she told me the best advice.
It takes the time, it takes, it.
Speaker 2 (59:26):
Takes the time it takes. Hashtag mat Johnson so much.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
All right, Branda vischien fam I need you to go
follow Jodian everywhere. We're going to put her Instagram in
the show notes. It's at Jody Anne Beery and where else?
Speaker 2 (59:38):
What else?
Speaker 1 (59:38):
We got to put a link to the book. We
got to go pick up the book. How else can
we support you?
Speaker 2 (59:44):
Just? You know, so here the book with other people
talk about the book. I have a couple of folks
who come to lit Lounge. They all got the book,
and at lit Lounge they decided to do a little
book club, which I thought was just so cool. It's
just like, I know, it's like two people. There's like
a couple who knew each other, but the whole group
(01:00:06):
has never done anything together. And so what I heard
is that, you know, one person cooked, they ate good food.
They had a fire pit and just like talked through
the book and the conversations that they were having that
I heard about, were just like, man, this is the point.
This is the point because they're all sitting around. Yeah
(01:00:29):
they have different careers, but some overlap, and they're like, well,
what do we do? Well? What do we do? And
I'm like, wait, that's that's it. That's the point. Right,
You're in someone's backyard a fire pit and asking what
should we do? Like, that's where it starts. And so
I want people to have a relationship with the book
(01:00:51):
that does not exist online, that exists with other people.
I would I would love that even more than a fall.
Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Hell all right, y'all take it to the book club,
get the book and then have a conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And somebody needs to cook for y'all. Someone needs to cook.
There needs to be food.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
There, or I go to a restaurant. Whatever you want. Enjoy,
be merry, have convos.
Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Man.
Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
I'm such a pleasure. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Hope to see you here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yes, absolutely, okay, be a fam Thank you so much
for listening to this week's show. I want to shout
out to our production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our
fearless leader for Idea to launch productions. I want to
shout out my assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for
(01:01:42):
helping me put the show together. It is not a
one person project, as much as I have tried to
make it so these past ten years. I need help, y'all,
and thank goodness I've been able to put this team
around me to support me on this journey and to
y'all be a fam. I love you so so so
so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you sign
(01:02:03):
up to the newsletter to get all the latest updates
on upcoming episodes, our ten year anniversary celebrations to come,
and until next time, talk to you soon via buy
Hey ba fam, Let's be real for a second, and
y'all know I keep it a book. The job market
has been brutal, now not brutal trash, especially for women
(01:02:24):
of color. Over three hundred thousand of us have disappeared
from the workforce this year alone, and not by choice,
but because of layoffs, disappearing DEI programs, and stagnant wages
that keep cutting us out of opportunity. Our unemployment rate
has jumped to over seven percent, while our pay gap
continues to widen. I know all of that sounds dire.
(01:02:46):
But here's what I want y'all to know. You do
not have to wait for the system to save you.
That's exactly why I created the Mandy money Makers Group
coaching community. It is a coaching community that is built
for us by us. Inside the community, we're not just
talking about how to negotiate or to how to get
the job that you want. It's about finding purpose in
(01:03:07):
your career. It's about finding communities and others, feeling seen,
feeling heard, and also having a sounding board and a
mirror to reflect your own magic, your own sparkle right
back to yourself. In this community, you'll get group coaching
led by me, but you also get peer to peer
accountability with proven tools and resources that can help you
(01:03:29):
do what we have always done since rise. Even when
the odds are stacked against us, despite all the challenges,
we will rise. If you're interested in joining the Mandy
money Makers community and having that support to bolster you
and help you tap back into your magic so that
you can lead your career with intention and heart and
(01:03:50):
your own intuition, trusting that again, please join us. You
can find information in the show notes of today's episodes,
or go to MA many mooney dot com slash community.
That's Mandy m A n d I money dot com
slash community. I would love to see y'all there. Enrollment
is open, so please go check out mandymoney dot com
(01:04:14):
slash community today
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