It’s Not Just Business: Healthcare Equity & leadership with Dr. Errol Pierre

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I can count endless stories of people who were sick
and forego for when care because they knew the system
was bad. They knew they were going to be on
a waiting line for four hours. They knew they were
going to wait a line just to get a script
to go see another doctor. They knew they were going
to get a bill in the mail for four bucks,

(00:21):
and they have no idea how they're going to pay
for it. This is Here After, and I'm your host,
Megan Divine, author of the best selling book It's Okay
that You're Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, business leader
and mentor and author and corporate exact doctor Errol Pierre
joins us to talk about the hardships inherent in climbing
the corporate ladder, systemic equity, and why all advocacy at

(00:45):
its root is really grief work. I know that's a
hodgepodge of things everybody, but the conversation we're about to
have is going to bring all that stuff together. So
settle in. We'll be right back after this first break.

(01:08):
Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover
a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a license mental health provider, or for professional supervision related
to your work. Hey friends, So, on the surface, today's

(01:30):
guest might seem like an odd match for this show.
I mean, okay, listen to the description of his new
book in the Way Up, Climbing the Corporate Mountain. As
a professional color accomplished executive, Dr Errol Prierre delivers a
pragmatic and actionable guide to help underrepresented individuals from all
ethnic backgrounds achieve their professional goals and elevate their careers

(01:52):
in today's modern workplace. And here's his bio. Dr Errol
Pierre provides leadership, mentorship and ideans to professionals of color
across various industries, ensuring the advancement of diverse professionals into
leadership positions. Okay, all of that sounds amazing and awesome
and it is. But I mean, the tagline of Hereafter

(02:17):
is conversations with interesting people about difficult things. So why
exactly is a corporate executive, mentor leadership author a guest
on the show. Well, as you will hear in today's conversation, grief, love, suffering,
and a dream for a better world is at the

(02:37):
root of everything Dr Errol Pierre does. We kind of
came to that realization together in the course of our conversation,
which is also really cool. So on one hand, yes,
he is an amazing mentor and leader and guide, particularly
for people of color looking to advance their careers. But
he's also an advocate for equity and x sessibility in healthcare, which,

(03:01):
when you think about it, is actually a ferocious, deeply
embodied care for the well being of individuals and families
and communities. The work of leadership, whether on a corporate
level or an advocacy, isn't like to erase pain, the
pain that is such a large part of being human.
But the real work is to decrease the odds of
that pain showing up on your doorstep, and to reduce

(03:25):
suffering when that kind of pain can't be avoided. This
conversation is really special, So I don't want you to
listen to his accolades and think that doesn't sound like me.
There is so much in this conversation for everybody. Now.
When I first started talking to him, I kind of frontloaded, though.
Let's go over your bio and why you being here

(03:46):
is a topic of discussion before I even actually kind
of properly welcomed him to the show, sort of a
host faux pop. But you know whatever, I'm jumping in
with my own over zealous awkward. Welcome to the awkward
party is also a tagline for the show, so you know,
I'm I'm just breaking it anyway, here you go, jumping

(04:08):
right in with the over zealous awkward. My conversation with
Dr Errol Pierre. So in the intro, I was telling
people that you provide leadership, mentorship and guidance to professionals
of color across various industries, ensuring the advancement of diverse
professionals into leadership positions, which is a lot of business

(04:30):
talk that I lifted from your books press release, but
I want to get behind that. So first of all,
welcome to the show, Errol. Thank you for having me pleasure.
We were chatting before we got rolling about like the
the work of bringing a book out into the world,

(04:50):
and I think that's part of it too, that like
there's this book about business that you have out in
the world, but it's really more than a book about business.
Can you tell me a little bit about that? Sure? Sure?
So the culmination of the book The Way Up was
after the murder of George Floyd and during the pandemic

(05:11):
that disproportionately impacted communities of color, black and brown populations.
I was stuck in a nine square foot apartment in
the Bronx with too much time in my hands and
was just retrospective on how I ended up being where
I was at that point in time, and putting pen
to paper, I really wanted to describe my journey from

(05:34):
working in the beauty supply store warehouse to becoming chief
operating officer of a large insurance company in New York
and then still feeling some emptiness. And so the book
is a culmination of, Hey, I got to where you're
supposed to get to. You got to the top, but
I wasn't happy. And I also interviewed eleven other executives
of color as well, which are infused to the books.

(05:56):
Their quotes are through there because unfortunately, under represented people
like myself, we're not believed. So you need other people
to have the same story so that you're validated. So
I also wanted to infuse their input and their insights
and their experiences, and then lastly back it up with
data and statistics, so that again it's not just an

(06:18):
anecdotal story, but that that's really the culmination of it.
And the goal is twofold one. If you are a
person of color, hey, here's a nice little rubric of
tips and tricks that you can learn. That's great. But
then I think the other major important piece is if
anyone reads this book, especially someone in leadership at corporation,
will realize like, wow, I didn't know my employees are

(06:42):
going through this just to tread in place, and that's
really the bigger unset story. Yeah, there's sort of this
like lip service around caring about employees mental health, and
I love that you bring that up, like you want
some real stories about what your employees are bringing to
our lives on the job, Like can we have that

(07:02):
conversation instead of that sort of you know, pop psychology
lip service will give you a gift basket for all
of your hard work, but not address the real systemic
issues inside corporate structure. Now you mentor professionals of color
who work in the health care industry, and I imagine
that there are conversations about really difficult things inside that

(07:23):
work that you do. It's not just career strategy so
you know my question was going to be can we
talk a little bit about the grief spoken and unspoken
for people of color inside the corporate climb? But I
think I want to ask a question before that, which is,
how does grief intersect with this work for you? If
it does, yeah, it's a great question. It does intersect

(07:46):
because I say this a bunch of times and throughout
the chapters, the way society is is going to show
up inside the office. And for some strange reason, we
have this belief that when you show up to work
like this different person, you're not bringing the baggage that
you have in and so in society, if I go

(08:06):
to a grocery store and someone follows me around because
they think I'm going to take something, that sort of
chip on my shoulder, that paranoia, that feeling is going
to show up in the workplace when I don't get
a promotion or I get passed on for a job,
and delinking the two you do a disservice to your employees.
So grief is absolutely throughout. Some of the chapters talk

(08:29):
about traumatic experiences I've been through and how to harness them. First,
you have to be aware of them and acknowledge them
so that you can like distress and it doesn't create anxiety.
And then once you get to that point, which can
take a while, then harness them as you continue your climb.
So grief runs throughout it greet not just my grief,

(08:52):
also brief of my parents. Because I talk about my
parents that came from Haiti and how they're America was
different than my America, but yet they're America totally influenced
how I operate in my America. Yeah, and your parents
came to America from Haiti in the seventies, right, as
you said, completely different world. And you write that while
your father worked really hard and was in a union,

(09:13):
health care was out of reach for your family, right, Like,
that's just one example of challenges that people face. You
talked about it a little bit, But what role does
that experience play in the life that you've built for
yourself and the life that you hope to help others
build for themselves. I talked about in the book It's
it's a I see it right now vividly. I had
to get a hut canal when I was a kid,

(09:35):
and I went to the dentist, and the dentist told
my dad, and these are grown ups talking, so like
you're off to the side, you don't know it's right.
And it's interesting what kids remember right when they're older,
and the dentist center tolding my dad we can't complete
the work until January one of next year, so even
though you started, it was like September, like he has
to come back in January. I had no idea what

(09:55):
this smet, and so they sort of like closed my
tooth that was unfinished and we left, and I remember
having this feeling of an unfinished mouth walking around, not
realizing why I had to wait till January. Later on
in life, I learned, oh, dental plans for union workers
who have worked menial jobs my dad was dishwasher at
a nursing home are not comprehensive. So we had an

(10:18):
out of pocket max, which meant the root canal. The
whole cost of root canal was more than the benefit
I had per year, and so I end up ironically
working in health insurance and that became my passion. It's like,
this is crazy that in the country that is spends
more money than any country in the world on healthcare,

(10:40):
doesn't provide adequate comprehensive, high quality care to all of
its citizens with dignity and respect. There's so much of
a lack of dignity and respect when a father has
to tell their son, I'm going to bring you back
to finish your tooth next year. So I know he
felt that as a hard hit, and I could see
it as a kid that he was kind of like,
I'm not doing enough, and I thinking, my passion. That's

(11:02):
why I'm into health equity space today. Of no one,
no one, no one should not get comprehensive care that
they deserved that's culturally sensitive and high quality. Yeah. I
mean again, we go back to sort of these are
headlines and buzz words, right. The lack of comprehensive health
care has real world impact, like all of these things,
but until you live it, until you really understand the

(11:25):
personal impact of that, it's just a headline. It's just
something to be mad about. It's just something to say
we should all move to Canada or you know whatever,
the things that we do that are not in the
muck of the real human toll of that. Yeah. The
one thing I'd add to is we shouldn't wait until

(11:45):
it happens to us for it to be validated. So
I don't need to have someone else experience lack of
health care for me to say, oh, it happened to
my mother, so now I believe in it and unfortunate. Really,
it happens a lot in America where it's like, well,
I don't experience it, so it's not real until it
happens to you. Then you're like, well, I'm speaking from

(12:06):
you know, experience, just so real. It shouldn't be that way.
If if one human experienced it, then it's valid. Yeah,
and I would love that. I would love if if
human brains work that way. But it does seem like
there's something important that has to happen to sort of
open those doors in the brain to recognize somebody else
as deserving of support and access and care and all

(12:32):
of those things. There's this great I'm not going to
go on this tangent for too long, but there's this
great book called General Theory of Love written by three psychiatrists.
It's an older book now, but they talk about how
there were experiments done on the limbic part of the
brain in mammals. I promise this is related to what
you were just saying, But what they found and sorry,

(12:54):
this is an animal study, everybody, not my study, don't
yell at me. But what they found was that if
they damn of just the limbic part of the brain
of female hamsters, that those female hamsters wouldn't recognize their
own offspring, they would basically treat them as furniture, and
that if they stimulated the limbic part of the brain,
then everybody was family and they cared for each other.

(13:18):
And they're like, so, so of course me. I'm like, so,
what we're saying is that for the people who enact
policies that do actual damage to real, actual people, they
have limbic deficits, and there's some limbic damage in there,
and what we need to do is find some way
to help them reconnect with the part of their brains
that sees every life as valid and deserving of care.

(13:41):
And how the heck do we do that, I don't know,
but I do know that some of that work is
advocacy work. I told you I could bring this back
right a lot of so some of the ways that
we do that that we help people understand that things
need to happen to make things better for others, even

(14:01):
if it's not your own shared experience. Like, that's advocacy
work in a nutshell, and a lot of your public
advocacy work is in health equity. That phrase health equity
is something that we sometimes see in headlines. So can
you tell me, first of all, what that means in
a business and policy sense, and then what it means
for you personally. We touched on that a bit, but
I like the two parter here. Yeah. Sure, So health

(14:23):
equity the intent is it's different than equality health Health
equality equal would mean everyone gets a visit to a physician.
One visit to a physician, that's equal, But some patients
may need six visits, and some may patients may be
so healthy they need zero. So health equity looks from

(14:45):
an economic lens, how to take limited resources and make
sure that they're used in the most equitable efficient way
based on the needs of the people. And so the
example you know you can use is like one patient
maybe a wheelchair. Doesn't mean everyone needs a wheelchair for
it to be equal, But from an equino perspective, say

(15:05):
give this person a wheelchair, this other person may need
something else. And so we spend two point five times
more than any other country in the nation. We don't
need more money, we need better bureaucratic systems to make
sure that the money flows to the right places. And
so what health Equity fights for is today there is
somewhere in New York City a mom who's a single

(15:27):
mom with a child who won't go to the doctor
because by taking off work means they won't make money,
and so they stay at work and their sickness gets
worse and they end up in the emergency room at
the worst point, and then on the same vein. And
there's another mom who can take off work because their
salaried and they decide to bring their child to the

(15:50):
off the doctor's office twenty times for stifools, earaches anything,
And that person who's going twenty times can probably go
four times. And then the mom who never went once
should probably go twice at least for preventive care of
visits in the follow up. And what Health Equity trying
to do is shake that. It turns into sometimes controversial

(16:11):
because it's like you're taking something from someone, you're rationing care. Ironically,
every developed nation on the planet besides us, that's health
care that way, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden. That's
how they do care. They say, the people who need
it get it. The people who don't need it, they
will be a little bit longer. That's just how it
works when you have limited resources. So that that's really help.

(16:32):
Equity you layer on to it as well cultural competency.
We happen to be some of the most diverse citizens
in the world in America, and so you're thinking through
English is not the first language. What happens when someone's
telling you, you know, discharge information on how to leave
a hospital. So if someone is saying to you you
need to have a meal with these medications that you

(16:54):
take twice a day, and it's not in their native language,
do they understand those instructions that will be abide by it.
The example I always used to is some only with
pneumonia shows up to the emergency room. You stabilize them,
you give the medication, you send them home. They end
up going back to a nitia house building public housing
that doesn't have heat. We didn't solve the issue. So
how that But he also thinks about the other determinants

(17:17):
of health that's outside of just getting access to care,
but other things that also lead to health outcomes. Yeah,
it's really looking at the whole complex picture of things
and understanding that we don't operate in a vacuum. And
I think that industry and corporate levels often think just
in one channel, right, yeah, just one channel and not
in systems. And it's like, you know, I'm listening to

(17:38):
you say the you know, the economic benefit of equitable
care like it, we have to actually make it fit
into the language that industry speaks, which is economics. Right,
it's it's r O I And that actually caring for
people in the ways that they need to be cared
for is to your economic benefit. Is that a hard sell? Now,

(18:00):
I'm just now, I'm just indulging my curiosity, But is
that a hard sell inside the health care industry for you?
I don't think it's a hard sell. I think the
work needed to get done to make it happen is
the hard sell. So the example we can show is
other developed nations like Norway, Sweden. They do lots of
social programs for their citizens, stick paid leave, child care,

(18:23):
free healthcare, and what they find is their healthcare costs
are reduced because they're investing in things that keep people healthy. Right.
People believe that in concept. Now in America, when you say, okay,
we agree with the concept, let's make it happen. Songbody
has to change, and that's what the rubb is. No
one wants to change. Like I agree, eral health equity,

(18:44):
let's do it. But can you leave me alone and
start with them? Right? I mean, I think this is
this is probably you know, the response to a lot
of behavioral and worldview changes, right like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that sounds great. I'm on board as long as I
don't have to do anything different, as long as I
don't have to feel any discomfort, as long as nothing

(19:06):
in my world needs to change. And of course there's
a direct bridge here to addressing systemic racism in the
medical industry, right like, oh yeah, I'm totally on board
with you. I get this. That's a terrible outcome. But
I like, I've got managed care, and I've got this,
and I've got that. Like, so we think about the
health care industry, insurance especially as this like anti human

(19:30):
monolith from a consumer that that is definitely how I
feel about it. But I was listening to an interview
with you the other day as I was preparing for
our time here together, and you were talking about systemic
racism and what we call poor medical outcomes for people
of color. And you used a term of systemic equity

(19:51):
as a counterpoint to systemic racism. Can we talk about
that for a minute, and then I then I do
want to get into like the reality of health outcomes
for communities of color. So systemic equity, what does that mean?
So I'll say that we're trying to fix the issues.
And so when you think from a perspective of solving things,

(20:14):
you hear the term that people use a systemic racism
and systemic inequality because it's embedded into systems that we have.
I like to say, let's start from scratch. Let's have
a clean piece of paper. What would be the world
we would imagine. So you start with systemic equity, and
from that perspective, you're like, here's all the dollars, now,

(20:36):
let's rationally think about how to get it federated to
the right places. Systemic equity would then say, okay, the
best most efficient way to deliver care is to preventive
care visits. Awesome. Here are a group of people who
are unable to show up to the doctor because transportation

(20:56):
is an issue, because there are a senior who lives
on a shift or walk up that doesn't have an
elevator because they are salaried, and any time that they
take off work, they're not putting money in their pocket.
They can't find a doctor speaks their language. Of the
vaccination websites were only in English, so if they speak
or do Chinese Asian creole, they won't even know how

(21:18):
to book an employment. So we would make sure there
was more funds for those to get their preventive care visits,
and then folks that can navigate the healthcare arena would
eventually get their care as well because they have health literacy,
they have the capabilities, they have transportation and things of
that nature. And so instead of speaking of a deficit

(21:39):
like oh my gosh, that's systemic inequity and it's so bad, Like, well,
how would we create the perfect model where we start
with systemic equity. It's embedded in the system. An example
is when they created those vaccination websites for everyone to
get vaccinated. Obviously, the people who were around the table,
we're thinking through the lens themselves, but like I use

(22:01):
a desktop and it's English, not realizing that the people
who had the highest hesitancy don't use desktop as their
formal way to get into that access to use a
mobile phone, and English is not their first language, so
systemic equity would have built a mobile app in Spanish
and Chinese first, So that that's the type of thing

(22:21):
that I like to solve publes with. From that perspective,
it's like, let's look at it from a systetic equity lens.
Start with the way you want to create it, as
opposed to trying to move the deck chairs on something
that's broken. That is brilliant. It really is, because it's
like I think, when you start talking about systemic racism
systemic inequity, people get their hackles up. Just is what

(22:43):
you describe, Like that sounds great, but don't make me
change anything. But I think if you present things as
let's start from scratch and what dream can we build,
I think that maybe that engages people's limbic systems. I
don't know, but there's something really welcoming about this idea
of collaborating on the world we most want. I remember

(23:05):
a teacher of mine I used to say years ago,
like everybody can agree that we want clean water. Where
we argue is about who gets to have it right.
So I hear what you're saying there is like we
can all agree that we want to be cared for,
and we want to care for other people. We want
to like indulge is the wrong word here, but like

(23:27):
indulge our better natures because at some core level, I
think also what I really love about that approach is
it sort of has an unspoken baseline of people are
good and want to do good right, which I think
can easily get lost in the choices that people and
industries and countries. And you mentioned this, the phrase systemic

(23:50):
racism can denote that it's impossible to solve. They say, oh,
it's systemic, So now you're absolving human beings from their
individual behaviors. Well, it's not me, it's systemic. And then
to its systemic, so you're like, well, how am I
going to change healthcare? That's too big, it's too and
so I think it's defeating too from people of like

(24:13):
I don't don't even know where to start. This is
too big, and I absolved of any responsibility because it's
the system. So I also think the phrase also leads
to some of that cynicism. I love that it really
is a welcoming in thing like, um, you know at
the time that we're recording l A County and well
all of California has been getting pelted with a lot
of rain, and there's a lot of pissy tweets out
there saying, good job, Billy, you didn't keep the water

(24:36):
right when like, um, okay, you clearly have no idea
how water reclamation works on a big systemic level. But like,
these are really big complex issues and it's not just
up to the big complex forces to solve, Like, there
are things that we can do as individuals to help

(24:56):
make things different. It's not just passing things downstream just
somebody else whose job it is. Right, Yeah, and we
go back to sort of advocacy and finding places that
are important to you to take action. Right. I want
to talk a little bit about your work in Haiti,
if we could do that, Feminant. We've been talking with

(25:22):
Dr Errol Pierre, author of the new book The Way Up.
Let's get back to it. I want to talk a
little bit about your work in Haiti, if we could
do that, Feminant. So you're on the board of Minnova,
which is a nonprofit that provides free medical character residents
of North Eastern Haiti and as I was reading about
that work and we talked a second ago about like

(25:43):
the lenses that we look through. I see everything as
a grief issue. Everything is a grief issue in my opinion.
But reading about that work, I was like, this is
this is a grief issue, right, Advocacy and policy are
a grief issue. But I want to I want to
hear that from you, is do you think that's accurate?
Is my assessment that, like policy is a grief issue?
I think so, I've never thought of it through that lens,

(26:04):
But as you say it, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
So Haiti and I said this earlier. I mean, what
they've gone through is just traumatic as a whole for
a nation. God is independence at eighteen o four from
but the biggest empires at the time the poem bought
apart and ever since then they've been sort of punished

(26:25):
because back then, to see a country gain as freedom
as former slaves would have been, you know, lead to
other countries to the same. So a lot of countries
didn't even recognize their independence, didn't trade with them, and
they sort of that's stuck in a rut. France ended
up charging them debt, so they basically bought their own bodies,
which is just insane that that happened. One of the

(26:47):
few countries I actually had to pay for their freedom.
And so that all you fast forward to a country
that is consistently just getting bombarded by whether natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes,
or just coups after coups, like right now, they don't
have a stable government as it is. Their former president
was was assassinated and they still don't have a new president.
And so I'm thinking through that lens of like what

(27:10):
can I do. I'm an American, my parents grew up
in Haiti, but I feel like I can do something
because I'm so thankful for I am in my career.
And that's where I stumbled upon many Nova. There was
a major earthquake, seven point something earthquake in two and
that was sort of the impetus for me to know
that I had to go back to the country of

(27:33):
my father, and so I was like, I need to
do something. I can't just sit here and donate to
American Red Cross, like I felt the need that I
had to be there, And so was my first visit
to Haiti on a mission trip and we just like
at that point in time, it was literally like all
hands on deck providing food. We were at a tent
based hospital, providing like immediate care. And the ironic thing

(27:55):
is things that we take for granted, that we buy
over the counter at CVS and Walgreens, these were medications
we were giving to people in Haiti because they don't
have it. So, you know, someone suffering from diarrhea, like
simple things. And so I didn't think we would be
getting out pep to bisball as a as a need,
but that's what people needed at the time because the
water was so dirty as an earthquake, and so it

(28:17):
was just something I knew that I wanted to give back,
and I felt the purpose to MEDINVA does these trips
every year. So I've been back to Haiti every year since,
with the exception of because of COVID, but I've got
every year besides that, and we've since raised enough money
to have a full time clinic. So one of the

(28:37):
things with nonprofits are you know, you do these meditarian
humanitarian trips and you just show up, you give out care,
and you leave, and people always say, well, how is
that continuous? What do you do? It's you're just a
drop in the bucket, and so we really wanted to
be have a stable, long term healthcare access point for
the people of Haiti. And so we've since built a
clinic in the city of Karacoll that's now open twenty

(29:00):
four hours, seven days a week. It's staff by Haitians,
it's run by Haitians, it's ser Statians, and so we
we still n race for keeping that clinic open, and
I sit on the board just always thinking about advocacy
on how to keep those patients that are working they're safe,
and then when it's safe again, bringing Americans to Haiti
so they can see it for themselves. So as you're

(29:20):
describing that, I'm wondering. We talked a few minutes ago
about building the world that we want from the ground up.
Do you feel like that's part of what's happening with
Mannova and the work in Haiti. It's it's tough that
things impacting Haiti are so big and multi layered. However,
if the least I can do is and this gets

(29:41):
back to health equity, provide culturally competent care. So these
are Haitian doctors and nurses getting care to Haitians what
tends to happen is a lot of NGOs show up
and they're providing great care to doing what they need
to do, but it's not in language, is not culturally relevant.
So I love the fact that this clinic is run
by Haiti and and and staff by ations um So

(30:03):
we're doing our apart from that perspective, and then we're
helping the economy because we hire from the community where
the clinic is. I would love to think it can
expand the hardest part about it is trying to think
through how to make it sustainable on its own so
it does it doesn't need donations. I will continue to
obviously raise funds, but like we have to think the

(30:23):
next step of how to become sustainable. Over time, I
think we'll get to the point of creating the new
future when within Haiti there could be systems that are
sustainable on their own, that can help their own people. Yeah,
there's a point here that I want to pull out
that as we start to build into that dream of

(30:43):
systemic equity and to place care where it needs to
be placed. It doesn't mean that things don't suck. It
doesn't mean that there isn't still suffering and complex issues
and being in the path of natural disasters like that,
the best organized health care system is not going to
stop hurricanes. And bringing this back to the States, it's

(31:07):
like health care equity. Systemic equity is not going to
stop people from getting sick. It's not going to stop
people from dying. If that's not our goal, what's our goal?
So it doesn't stop people from getting sick, but what
it will start is that person who was sick to say,

(31:29):
I'm actually going to make effort to get the care
I need because the barriers have been removed. I can
count endless stories of people who were sick and forego
for when care because they knew the system was bad.
They knew they were going to be on a waiting
line for four hours. They knew they were going to

(31:51):
wait a line just to get a script to go
see another doctor. They knew they were going to get
a bill into mail for four bucks, and they have
no idea how they're going to pay for it. And
so if you think about a model war, yes, we
when we can't prevent people from getting sick, but can
we make a model that when you are sick, at
least you know you're going to get the care you need,
and you're gonna feel respect and so that you actually
go and get the care your need. The vast majority

(32:13):
of our pain that we feel on the system is
because of people avoiding care one because of cost, too,
because of fear, and then in three just because they
don't feel the system is built for them. I have
to say share one stat so mortunity I Mortality in
America is as bad as third world countries are stats.

(32:35):
So if you take a hundred thousand women and they're pregnant,
on average, fifteen of them will die giving birth. And
if you look at other countries like Japan or Norway,
it's like seven and six and five, and you're in
some European countries, so it's low. We're fifteen. Now when
you look at African American women, it jumps up to forty,

(32:57):
and then specifically Haitian women in Brooklyn where of it's
like sixty eight. Wow. And so in America we have
the average of fifteen, but different people have much higher numbers.
And the question is, well why is that? And when
you look at the data, when a black woman gives
birth and goes into the hospital, one their level of

(33:18):
pain is not believed that this happened to Serena Williams.
So it's it doesn't matter if you're lowing tone or
you're a billionaire. The level of pain is not believed.
So they say, you know, on a scaffulment to tend,
how's your pain? Black woman says eight, And they're like, Oh,
you're exaggerating because I think you're strong. Maybe you're a
big woman, you have I think your skin looks tough.

(33:41):
You guys just know how to get through things. So
they're not believed from that perspective. And then too, for
some strange reason, and this is from bias, typical regiments
that's supposed to be provided aren't provided to patients of
color because they're like, well, they don't need that. I
don't I'm not going to give it. I'm not going
to do that. And you actually see patient mattern changes
that happened specifically to a woman of color giving birth

(34:04):
Black women, and so we know the reasons why it's
sixty eight patient mothers are going to die when they
give birth out of a hundred thousand verses fifteen. And
then it's like, are we going to have the intestine
afforded to to call it out and say we can
fix it. We know we can fix it. We're gonna
believe them when they say what pain level they're at,
and we're going to give the same level of care.

(34:24):
So this mother that we would any other mother that
walks in, and we're not going to let the color
of their skin have like implicit bias and have us
do something different. There's a good book called a tool
one day called Checklist Manifesto, and essentially it's like, make
it checklist that way, there's no bias. Everyone who comes
in that presents this way, they get this, and you

(34:44):
remove the bias of this like subjectivity of the doctors saying, ah,
they don't need that, I'm gonna do will do this,
which then leads to death, you know, with with with
that type of process. Without having a checklist manifesto, all
of this awareness and advocacy and a resting systemic patterns,
all of these things, the work you do is grief work,

(35:06):
right because again I'm going to go back to headlines, right,
Like we see the articles and the news stories and
the clips of maternal death rates for black women, and
it's a headline, right, and it might be something that
we say, like that sucks, like that's not right, and
then we go back to, you know, if that hasn't
been in our personal sphere, we go back to, you know,

(35:28):
everything is a dumpster fire. If that has been in
our personal sphere, we say, yeah, I lived that, and
it's it's this big thing that we can't we can't
seem to get people to pay attention to. But these
are like, these are actual, real people and families and
communities that are living the effects of these practices. And
so you know, you don't have to claim that you

(35:48):
do grief work. But from where I sit, like all
of this advocacy work on so many levels, is to
reduce pain where there is pain of aoid pain where
pain can be avoided, and where we can't avoid pain,
we care for the suffering of the individuals, the families,
and the communities to surround that suffering with support. And

(36:11):
that's grief work. Appreciate it. I want to go back
to the focus of your book if I can. It
kind of feels like a sharp detour from what we've
been talking about. But again for me, like I don't
see the territory that we've just been exploring, and your
book as two separate things because we can't divorce. I

(36:35):
think you started out by saying this, like you can't
take the social and communal lived experience and separate it
from your experience in the job force, in the work world,
Like there is no what is that? What's that show
that I haven't watched? Where like there's a an enforced
separation between work and your world or something severance, right,

(37:00):
Like I sorry, everybody, I am under an entertainment rock
and I haven't seen it, but I do know what
it is enough to reference it here, But like that
doesn't exist, right, And so a lot of what you
do in your book is naming those on the job
and off the job issues and helping people navigate them.

(37:21):
One of my favorite things about your approach is, like,
you know, you think about a business a business coach.
You're not a business coach, but you think about like
business coaching, and they're like, you can do anything, nothing
is impossible. And what I love about you as a
human and you as a leader is you don't say
that stuff because the reality is is that some things
are impossible and you can't do everything that you dream

(37:47):
And if we could start having those conversations, that could
really change things. Yeah, I call out specifically the example
of not becoming the race police in your corporation. So, yes, diversity,
equity and inclusion is important. Yes, you should call out
bias that you feel in the workplace, and you should
do it in the right way, and there's there's tips

(38:10):
to talk about how to do it and giving people
grace to the process. But you cannot be the police
for the company on what's racist and what's not as
a person of color, navigating through what's biased and what's not,
what's discrimented by what's not, because it will take you
so far away from your day job. You will be
let go not because of your bringing up these issues,

(38:32):
but because it's impossible to perform the way you need
to perform while trying to police human behavior. And so
I always say, like, like we talked about earlier, society
comes into the workplace there, it's not two different worlds.
So you know, you're literally trying to say I'm going
to throw every starfish back into the ocean. It's impossible.
So do what you need to do to navigate for

(38:55):
your career, help out your peers, But by no means
are you going to change the world. Because trying to say, like,
my company is going to be perfect, like society is
not perfect. Until society is perfect, your company won't be perfect.
But don't try to have that goal. Your goal is
make sure that you have the right mental health, make
sure that you're taking advantage of all the opportunities you can,

(39:17):
make sure you don't get walked over, and taking advantage
of you speak up when you see things, and you
navigate on behalf of you and your your peers. But
that's to the point of you know, it's I'm not
going to be someone as like raw you can change
the world. Everyone's going to be perfect panacea. It's like
it's not it's not worth it, and it's not possible either.
It's not possible. And I love how you know, when

(39:39):
we very first started our conversation, you said that a
lot of your work is about acknowledging the challenges for
people of color in that corporate leadership climb. And for me, like,
the acknowledgement is such powerful medicine, right, having spaces that
where you can tell the truth about that, And I
think that's some of the beauty of your business leader
work is you're naming what's true, right, and and not

(40:04):
from this and we will fix it all place. And
also not from a collapsed we're all screwed, but from
like this real position of awareness and support and encouragement
in the things that are within your sphere of control,
so that you can meet the level of success that

(40:25):
you most dream of for yourself while acknowledging the real
difficulties on the road to get there. I think that
the goal of the book was one and I've the
feedback I've gone from people that started reading it is Wow,
your story is so much like mine. So that's great.
So now you're not alone, because I think there's a
lot of people of color passing through the workplace thinking
they're by themselves and their alone, not realizing that other

(40:48):
people are going through it. Two saying it out loud
so you can point to black and white and saying, oh, okay,
Like now I know what impostor syndrome is. Now, I
know what code switching is. Now, I know the impacts
of performative allied ship. I know what to call it
when I see it. I didn't know there was a
vocadality award for that. Bad bosses, you know, sometimes bosses

(41:09):
are bad, not because the racist just because Darren asshole.
You know, think about the boss you're gonna work for
before you get the job. I think people worry about
d E and I after they get the job and
they walk in and say, oh, what programs you have?
You should be asking those things during the interview. And
I call it out specifically in the book, like, hey,
and you share with me on your team, what was

(41:31):
the last It was the diversity metrics of the last
round of promotions. Actually, did you know? That's a reasonable
question to ask. I'm just curious because as a person
of color that's going to be in a room where
I'm the only one I want to know, like, how
do you have experience and history of having emotions in
the past. But we have to get better at asking
those questions up front, and if someone's uncomfortable about that,

(41:52):
it tells you whether you should work there or not. Yeah,
that is clear information. If you ask that question and
they're like deer in the headlights like that as information,
that's important, you know, And I love I love this.
I mean the as you're describing that. Of course, my
brain is also thinking making the parallels between what you
just described and the work of building equitable systems from scratch.

(42:16):
It's like you can't stop the crap of the system,
like you can't take on that giant. However, there is
so much that you can do to reduce your own
suffering and to name the pain that's in the room.
And I think, you know this is this is a
band wagon that I'm on a lot that like, you know,
when we're talking about grief. When I'm talking about grief,

(42:38):
I'm not just talking about grief related to death. We're
talking about the pain and suffering of being alive and
all of the friction points where that shows up. And
the approach, you know, the the approach that I believe
in for grief is not just It doesn't just belong
to death and illness. It belongs to every part of

(42:58):
human life. And again, I I want to pull that,
pull that out, or pull that back that That's so
much of what I understand as the as the core
of the work that you do in the world, across
all of the sectors, is where can we name the
pain that's immovable and create systems of support around that
pain so that our suffering is reduced. I can share

(43:19):
an example, and I talk about this specifically in the book,
So people have mentored before that are frustrated with their
careers that they feel stuck. I'm just stuck, right, and
so I have this chapter on being an entry level
job and just feeling stuck and describing to an employee.
Think about it this way. One job entry is going
to get three thousand resumes. There's already bias in the

(43:43):
machine that's going to shrink that three thousand resumes down
to the ten that the recruiters actually gonna look at.
So there's a there's probably a long shot that you'll
be selected because what they're using is people who have
already been promoted and I'm already at the company and
using those words to put into the algorithm to get
new people. So most likely you're going to get squeezed out.

(44:06):
Then you have ten resumes left over, and then human
intervention happens. Probably the resumes are not diverse, right, the
ten resumes that they they're selecting, and then the panel
of the people that are going to do the interviews
are not diverse. So you're like, I'm not editing at
a job. But just take a step back and realize,
like all the barriers along the way that you went

(44:27):
through to get there, and what I was like, it
is what's actually happening. Someone has a mentor. That mentor says,
I have a job that's getting posted in June and
it's only in January. They know about it ahead of time.
Then they get an email the job's posting like tomorrow. Okay, great,
they already sent their ransome. They tell the recruiter Molly's
applying for the job. Make sure that you find her away.

(44:48):
You know, she's the one that I want to interview.
Other people come through, you do, we do the interview,
everyone already knows Molly is a chosen person, and then voila,
Molly got the job. So you're submitting resumes just really
nearly to all these websites going through that path. What
I would advise is you have to build relationships. You
need to find the mentor to find the relationships with

(45:09):
people internally that are gonna tell you about the role
before it's posted, and go from that perspective. And then
if you're in a position of power. What I now
have the control to do as a as a leader
in my company is when I look at the ten resumes,
I'm like, I will not start the process until the
ten resumes represent the community reserve. I need a diverse
late to candidates, and then the people are going to

(45:30):
do the interview. I need a diverse late of interviewees.
I won't even accept the people until I have a
diverse late. And so I can do that from my
perch from power. But then the person who's applying can
also do their part and saying I got to navigate
this system differently because just posting a resume is not
gonna happen. And so to your point, yes, you can
be you can have grief of the process, or you

(45:52):
could just say this is the way it is and
then what can I do about it? Yeah, there's there's
the truth telling in there. And you know everything every
thing comes down to relationship building, doesn't it. Everything always
comes down to relationship building, for good or for not good.
But that is that is what it is all about.
And I think that the way that we build the
worlds that we want across all sectors is relationship building

(46:14):
by telling the truth right and finding which part of
the suffering we can reduce. And now I wonder not
as I say that out loud, I'm like, oh wait,
but Rol is talking about don't start from a deficit.
Start by talking about the world that you want to
live in so that you can inhabit it. So I'm
going to have to think about how I talk about
the reduction of suffering in my dream vision of the world.

(46:35):
But that that is, that is some self work for
another day, the growth of the growth of joy. But
I think I think that gets really really tricky, at
least from in the work that I do, because we
so often rush joy without naming the pain, and so
that means that we leap frog over it. It's that
same sort of thing that if a person of color
is saying, like the cards are stacked against me and

(46:56):
like there's this and this, We're like, but focus on
the joy, right So there, For for me, there's a
lot of beauty in naming the pain and allowing it
to exist and then finding ways to reduce the suffering
around that, and to me that actually feels really hopeful.
But this show is not about my hope. It is
about your hope, which is a really lovely segue for me.
So much of the work that you do is with

(47:17):
these really big dinosaur systems, and change takes a really
long time. You're quoted in an article for Essence magazine
about the tech industry's slowness to diversify its workplace and
like empty promises, and there's a lot of that in
the book. So thinking about the long view of things,
or maybe the wide view of things, because I'm trying

(47:38):
to and I'm trying to like put my linguistic arms
around all of you, not just the exact knowing what
you know and living what you've lived. What does hope
look like for you now? Yeah, hope to me is
giving a dose of energy and optimism and I guess

(48:02):
passion to people who were just about to give up.
I talked about in the book Guarding against Synthicism and
every once in a while you just need another dose
of energy to keep moving. For me, I want to
go to bed every night saying, at bare minimum, my
passion and my purpose on life has moved forward at

(48:23):
least one inch, at least one inch before I go
to bed. And so today I'm doing more than one
inch talking with you when I want to make sure
at least one inch my passion and my purpose moves forward.
And if I can inspire a new set of leaders
that are going to be like I'm going to push
for this and push for an extra inch, and that's
person Now it's just about to give up to say

(48:44):
I've been trying this for so long. I'm about to
give up. What's the point? Hopefully there now reinvigorated to
say I'll push on for two more months, you know.
And that's really the hope that I have is that
if we all can collectively boost each other, inspire each other,
we keep pushing for the work, because I do think
at the end the place we will get better. You know.
It's like two steps forward, one steps back, but we

(49:06):
will get to a better place. H I love that,
And you're doing such big work to build that world
into being. Yeah, okay, this sounds like a really good
place to wrap us up. We're gonna link to your
website and to your new book in the show notes.
Anything else you want people to know about you or
the book, or places they should look for more information

(49:29):
about the little sparks that you set off in their minds.
Sure so, yeah, The Way Up is out now. It's
available anywhere books are sold Amazon, Target, Barnes and independent bookstores,
independent stores stores. Absolutely that your point clock and please
find me on social media, let's speak, let's talk. I'd
love to engage and talk about anything about, you know,

(49:49):
advancing just an inch e r R O l l
P I E r R e uh pretty much all
social media ro LP are on instat Ram, linked in Facebook,
anywhere you can find me excellent, And obviously we will
put all of those into the show notes for you everybody,
so that you do not have to furiously write them

(50:10):
down and figure out how to spell everything. It'll all
be in your show notes, all right, Errol, thank you
my friend for being here. Everybody. We will be right
back with your questions to carry with you right after this.

(50:31):
Each week I leave you with some questions to carry
with you until we meet again. Now you know what
really struck me in this conversation with Dr Errol Pierre, Well, okay, first,
surprising nobody. I definitely look at everything through a grief lens,
and I know that, but it's also really like wow,
that came up again. And not only do I look

(50:52):
at my own life in the world around me through
a grief lens, but I look at everybody else's lives
through a grief lens for them. Okay, Second thing that
I'm taking from this conversation, I felt truly optimistic after
the time I spent with Dr Pierre me being optimistic

(51:12):
is a stretch a lot of days. So feeling optimistic
is really cool. And I love that. I love his
vision of systemic equity. I love the phrasing of that,
this idea that we can build the world we want
to inhabit from the ground up every time we have
an opportunity to do so. That all just feels so

(51:32):
much more achievable than trying to fix a system that
is deeply, deeply broken. So what parts of the conversation
stuck with you today? What made you think or cry
or feel even just the tiniest bit more seen in
the life that you are living. Everybody's going to take
something different from today's show, but I do hope you

(51:54):
found something to hold onto. Hope really is a crowdsourced thing,
And as we've learned, grief is a really big motivator
behind a lot of important work. Whether we name it
that or not, grief, hope the world we most want
to inhabit, it's all the same work. Anyway. I don't

(52:15):
want to put my grief lens on your life. I
want you to tell me what's true for you. Check
out Refuge and Grief on Instagram or here after Pod
on TikTok to see video clips from the show and
you can leave your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your
AHA moments in the comments on those posts. You can
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(52:38):
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takes you. Remember to subscribe and leave a review, especially
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a review. Those reviews help more, and you know. If

(53:02):
you want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
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explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three
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leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find
the number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine
dot CEO. If you'd rather send an email, you can
do that too. Write on the website Megan Divine dot

(53:24):
c O. We want to hear from you. I want
to hear from you, this show, this world needs your voice. Together,
we can make things better even when they can't be
made right. I want more of this cool. Grief is
really the foundation of all things conversation. Grief education doesn't

(53:48):
just belong to end of life issues. As my dad says,
daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without
cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important
skill for everyone. Find trainings, professional resources, and my best
selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus The
Guided Journal for Grief at Megan Divine dot c. O

(54:13):
Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me
Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by
Elizabeth Fossio, with logistical and social media support from Micah,
Edited by Houston Tilly, and music provided by Wave Crush
and background noise provided not only by the helicopters in

(54:33):
the distance, but by Luna asking very quietly, very polightly,
but very repeatedly for a little doggy care and attention

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}It’s Not Just Business: Healthcare Equity & leadership with Dr. Errol Pierre