January 17, 2023 • 48 mins
LILY ZHENG (they/them) is a no-nonsense Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion speaker, strategist, and consultant who specializes in creating diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces through hands-on systemic change. A dedicated change-maker and advocate named a Forbes D&I Trailblazer, 2021 DEI Influencer, and LinkedIn Top Voice on Racial Equity, Lily's work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and NPR. Their most recent book, DEI Deconstructed, centers on accountable and effective practices to achieve DEI outcomes in organizations.
https://lilyzheng.co/home/books
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Musical Intro (00:01):
There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you can guess and
some I've only hinted at Soplease lend me your ear...
Narrator (00:26):
Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello, and welcometo Gender Stories with your
host, Dr. Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:34):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of
gender stories. I know that wesay that I'm incredibly excited,
but I am because every guest onthe show is so special. And
today I have the honor to bejoined by Lily Zheng, who's an
author and also a sought afterDiversity, Equity and Inclusion
speaker, strategist, andorganizational consultant who
(00:58):
specializes in systemic change,to turn positive dei intention
that diversity, equity andinclusion intentions into
positive dei outcomes forworkplaces and everyone in them.
Lily is a dedicated changemaker,an advocate named at Forbes DNI
(01:18):
trailblazer and LinkedIn topvoice in racial equity. Lily
recognizes the flashy one timetraining sessions that work and
work with organizationsdedicated to the time and
commitment that is needed to doDiversity, Equity and Inclusion
right to undo social inequalityand injustice, and create
(01:38):
organizational cultures that arerich with collaboration,
respect, resilience andinnovation. Lilia has been
featured in and writes for mediaoutlets, including the New York
Times and PR, Harvard BusinessReview, and HR executive. They
are the co author of gender andambiguity in the workplace. And
(02:00):
second book, the ethical sellout their book dei
deconstructed, which I think wasforthcoming when I was contacted
by it's now out, I believe andpublish. It's been out for a
couple of months, I know reallyexcited, so dei deconstructed
your no nonsense guide to doingthe work and doing it right. In
this book clearly presents acomprehensive set of solutions
(02:23):
that hold organizations andtheir leaders accountable,
laying out the path for anyonewith any background to become a
more effective dei practitioner,Ally and leader. DEI
econstructed is being releasedlast November from Berrett
Koehler publishers. And then ifyou want more information about
Lily, you can visit theirwebsite, which is in the summary
(02:46):
of the apps. And also at the endof the episode, we'll talk more
about where you can find thiswork. You can see why I'm so
excited. Lily, you've beenfeatured in so many outlets and
you do such amazing work. Thankyou for coming, and being on
gender stories. I reallyappreciate it.
Lily Zheng (03:02):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really
looking forward to thisconversation today.
Alex Iantaffi (03:07):
Thank you. So let's just start with the
listeners who don't knowanything about the field of
diversity, equity and inclusion.
And I wonder if you can maybegive just a brief overview of
what that means for people whohave never encountered kind of
dei work.
Lily Zheng (03:26):
I would say dei work is a relatively young field that
tries to make organization sothink about corporations,
universities, nonprofits, youname it into places that are
more diverse, right, so theyhave more representation, they
(03:48):
are there. They're betterrepresented by women and people
of color and disabled folks, andqueer and trans folks more
inclusive, and that they'rebetter respectful places to
work. People there feel thatthey're treated fairly people
feel a sense of belonging atwork, and equitable in that
(04:08):
folks are being paid fairlyfolks are being treated fairly,
there's no discrimination, andeveryone can thrive in the
workplace. These three acronyms,or rather the three letters in
the acronym Dei, and you mayhave seen many of the siblings
to this this moniker, which is,you know, deiba deij, right.
(04:30):
There's many other differentacronyms but essentially, all of
it speaks to this ongoing workof making organizations into
better places that work for morepeople.
Alex Iantaffi (04:42):
And that is wonderful, and I love our ideal
that sounds. And I know thatthere have been many critiques
as well of the I work and I knowas somebody who used to be an
academic and employed byuniversities, I sat personally
for many dei sessions. It wereactually more traumatizing for
(05:03):
those of us who were aware ofminoritized identity somewhere
in the room. And I know thatespecially several folks of
color really criticized theframework in I feel that in some
ways, you know, even the titleof your book, DEI deconstructed
in some way kind of addressesthat to some degree. So can you
(05:23):
talk a little bit about how youfeel that DEI can work best and
really live up to the beautifulvision, right of diversity,
equity and inclusion, we wantthe result we want the vision.
And yet sometimes it can feellike a DEI workshop is like a,
you know, a checkbox? Andemployers like, oh, great, we
(05:48):
did the DEI training check.
We're good. And now we don'tdiscriminate. And that's not how
it works, right?
Lily Zheng (05:55):
Absolutely, absolutely. So I'll go ahead and
start off by saying, I fullyagree with that perspective. In
fact, I am. I'm a frequentcritic of the DEI space. And it
sounds weird given that I'm anactive practitioner, and I spend
a lot of time doing this work.
And so many of the critiques ofthe EI are absolutely correct,
(06:19):
in that a lot of dei work ismore about intentions than it is
about outcomes. It's more aboutwhat training can we deploy? Or
what nice words can we say in aspeech and less about how can we
actually ensure that we enddiscrimination that we create
(06:40):
well being that we create theseoutcomes of diversity, equity
and inclusion? Now, how do weactually get there now that the
very cheeky answer is like,well, you should read the book.
But some of the ideas in thebook right, just to share more
with listeners are that first,we need to recognize that the
(07:01):
big failure of the DEI industryover the last few decades has
been a failure to focus our workon outcomes. So very few folks
in the DEI space, are able tosay this is the future we want
to create and operationalize it,they're not able to actually
identify, you know, how muchrepresentation are we going for?
(07:22):
How do we measure inclusion? Howdo we ensure that we create
equity equity, how so for whom,in what way beyond pay equity,
what other kinds of equityexist? And these foundational,
fundamental questions areneeded, so that we can do the
very basic work of holdingpeople accountable? Right,
(07:43):
something that we say a lot inthe corporate world is measure
what matters, and nobodymeasures Dei. That's a problem,
right? Because that means nomatter how much energy you put
in, at best, you're only goingto be able to say, well, I felt
good about that training. Idon't care if you feel good
about trainings, did they work?
(08:03):
Right? Like, did they fixthings. And the core argument
that I want to make is we can'teven start having that
conversation until we can alignon what it is we're trying to
achieve, how we measure thesethings. And then also, the very
common pitfalls that have madeit so quite a lot of folks,
especially folks who aremarginalized. Just don't trustee
(08:28):
ei work right? We've all or manyof us have sat through a dei
training that at best, we feltlike maybe is a c plus, right in
terms of quality. We've satthrough trainings where people
just read through long lists ofdo's and don'ts and trainings
where people seem like they'remore interested in protecting
the company against legalliability than actually fixing
any real issues. We've satthrough trainings where
(08:50):
facilitators will bring upreally hot button issues, but
not do anything to facilitatethe space, which, like you
mentioned, ends up oftentimes inlike real harm and real trauma
and not anything close tohealing or reparation or, or
improvement. So I thinkrecognizing that the field time
(09:11):
in the field of dei is just alittle bit messed up needs to be
step one of getting anywherefrom where we currently are
right, like we we have to facethe music, the trainings, the
one off talks, right, like thisstuff isn't working. It's never
worked. And we actually have alot of data and studies from the
(09:35):
last 30 and 40 years showingjust how these things keep
failing. Now, that hasn'tstopped people from doing them
over and over and over again.
But I want through this book andmy work, to put forward a
different way of doing Dei,right, a way that's grounded in
data, a way that's accountable,a way that's led by marginalized
(09:57):
communities a way that rebuildstrust within companies and orgs
in general, a way that leverageseverybody inside of an org to
work together on creating theseoutcomes. Yeah, so I think
that's, that's the first bigthing, right? Like, recognize
that things aren't great. Andthere is a way to do it right?
Alex Iantaffi (10:20):
That is really wonderful. I love that. Could
you share a little bit moreabout what elements can improve
kind of dei trainings? Right?
You talked about data, youtalked about outcome and
accountability. I love all ofthat. And like you said, step
one, this kind of recognizinghow, in many ways DEI has
failed. And so how, you know,what is step two? You know, I
(10:43):
know, I want people to read thebook. So you don't have to give
away
Unknown (10:48):
Oh, no. All of it away.
I'm giving it all away. So,look. So if step one is
recognizing all the ways inwhich the AI has failed, we can
actually reverse engineer how todo it right, just from that
answer, right? So gosh, thereare so many examples. I can't
name them all. But one of thebiggest examples of a dei
initiative that failed wasactually undertaken by the
(11:10):
Department of Defense in the US,right, the US military,
essentially, in the 70s, and80s. And this was one of the
most expensive dei initiativesof all time, most people haven't
heard about it, which is wild,because they trained nearly a
million practitioners, theytrain so many people to engage
(11:32):
in this work. They had aninstitute, they funded hundreds
of hours of training for theseinternal practitioners that were
going to go out into themilitary, and lead these sorts
of conversations about race,these courageous conversations
about difference and race andinequality and all that. It was
(11:52):
very ambitious, especially, youknow, in the 80s. And it was one
of the biggest, most resoundingfailures of all time in Dei.
Why, right? We just have to askwhy. Right? Like, because most
people haven't heard about this.
It. You know, most people assumeif you spend a bunch of money on
(12:13):
Dei, you train tons of people,it's rigorous. It's got to work,
right? So how come it failed?
Well, we can look at that oneexample. And see just what
happened. One, the practitionersused techniques that blamed and
shamed their their participants,they put typically white men in
hot seats and would grill them,they would say, Joe, or James or
(12:34):
Michael or whatever, right? Likeyou're a racist. Let's unpack
everything you do that makes youa racist. And the goal of that
exercise was to get people toconfront their biases and become
better people, and become moreself aware and grow and all of
these lofty things. Now,unfortunately, we know now, what
(12:54):
happens if you put someone in aseat and call them names is they
do the exact opposite of allthat. There's backlash effects,
there's resentment, there'sfrustration, there's anger. And
they usually take that out notonly on the workshop
facilitators, but other membersof marginalized communities. And
so that was big problem. Numberone, the fact that these sorts
(13:15):
of conversations exacerbatedtensions rather than reducing
them. And then problem two,given these backlash effects, it
turns out commanders within themilitary started to feel like
they were losing control oftheir workforces, that there was
a lot of tension going on. Andso they tried to take back
control from thesepractitioners, and they
(13:36):
sidelined the DEI practitionersand made them advisors. And then
what ended up happening is, overtime, these trainings turned
into check checkbox activities,bureaucratic hassles that people
had to do to fulfill somerequirement each year, the
content gotten more and morewatered down, so that it
wouldn't offend people, whichdid avoid backlash effects, but
(13:58):
it also avoided any helpfuleffects. And the spirits of the
trainings was fully diluted tothe point where at some point, I
believe in the 90s, the trainingwas rolled into some broader
sort of staff support trainingthat to this day probably
exists. And it was reallyexpensive. A lot of people were
trained, right, and it failed,resoundingly. Now, the reason
(14:22):
why I bring this up, it's almostlike you go into a corporation
right now and you see echoes ofthose sorts of trainings. You
see some practitioners, youknow, not really understand that
it's not the best idea to beputting people in positions of
power into hot seats andgrilling them. I'm sure it feels
good. I've done it once ortwice. It feels very
vindicating. Not great over thelong term. Oh, something also
(14:45):
about the military. They tookspecific efforts to avoid
measuring the impact of theirtraining. They were forbidden
from measuring the impact oftheir training. There was this
specific directives don'tmeasure this. I don't know what
people were thinking. But we seea lot of that today. Also,
right? There's this sort ofnaive expectation that whether
(15:07):
or not the training works, wedon't want to know, we just want
to fire and forget to just throwthis training out into the world
and hope it does something. Andovertime with the US military,
what we actually found, or whatresearchers later found, like
10, or 20 years after the factis that it increased disc
discrimination and decreasedrepresentation, it literally had
(15:27):
the opposite desired effect. Andwe're still doing the same thing
in companies today. Right? Sowhat are the takeaways? What can
we do that's opposite from that?
One, we need to make people feelgood about D is very basic,
right? blame and shame doesn'twork. When you try to blame
people for inequality, when youtry to shame people for having
(15:49):
certain privileges. Not onlydoes it make them not feel
great, but more importantly, itdoesn't actually change their
behavior. In fact, it can leadthem to lash out in the exact
opposite way that you want,which makes things worse for
marginalized groups. Instead,right, we need to be approaching
this from positive lens andgiving people ways to engage in
(16:10):
dei work, that helped themmaintain a sense of dignity, and
to feel a sense of pride intheir work. And, and, you know,
efforts. That's thing numberone, too, we need to measure
what we're doing, we need tomake sure that when we deploy
interventions, that we can tracktheir outcomes, we know what it
is they're trying to do, right?
You know, you you've spent a lotof time in academia, and
(16:32):
academics are better at thisthan non academics, maybe not
incredible. But in certainfields, at least, there's more
of a tradition of accountabilityof experiments of not assuming
that you're going to find whatyou're looking for. Right? We
need that same sort of rigorwith the AI work, we can't just
(16:54):
throw interventions into thevoid and expect that they're
going to work, we need to holdourselves and the people we work
with accountable, right. Andfinally, you can't do any of
this work with a one and done itjust doesn't work. There's
nothing you can do over 90minutes that undoes the daily
sort of conditioning, brokenpolicies, processes and systems,
right, deeply entrenchedcorporate cultures, you don't
(17:18):
fix any of that in 60 minutes,90 minutes or even two hours, it
has to be an ongoing effortthat's fully accountable, that,
like I mentioned, is stillpositive and gives people a way
to feel good. And all of thisneeds to come together in an
initiative that is wellinitiative, sorry, well
resourced, that is wellsupported, and that everyone
(17:39):
understands its purpose forexistence, right? Those are just
some of the takeaways we canlearn from history because we
have a long history of folksdoing it wrong, which I think is
a rich source of learning,right? I firmly believe that
history is is the greatestteacher, because even though
History doesn't repeat itself,per se, it usually rhymes. And
we know from what we're seeingright now that a lot of our
(18:03):
problems are ones that have beenaddressed before.
Alex Iantaffi (18:09):
Absolutely, thank you so much for that, that was
so informative, especially assomebody as an academic who has
sat through a lot of those tickboxes. Exercise, I was like,
that sounds so much better, Ican imagine how much deeper and
more meaningful the work wouldbe also, if it's ongoing, if
there is accountability, if it'soutcome focused, like you said,
(18:31):
and, and you mentioned, youknow, cisgender, heterosexual
white man at one point, youknow, being put in the hot seat
and being shamed and, and in away, for better or for worse,
corporations. And definitelyacademia is still full of
cisgender heterosexual whitemen. And so how can this work?
(18:51):
kind of help? Those folks who,in some ways are at the pinnacle
of privilege to leverage theirprivilege and power for change?
Are there specific strategiesthat work better than others to
kind of engage? Why cisgendermen because in some way, there's
almost like this defensivenessor kind of rejection of di work
(19:15):
straight away. From some, youknow, of course, not all, no
solution or category is amonolith. But are there ways
that work better to kind of kindof bring in those cis white men
and help them leverage theirpower for good for one of a
better word?
Unknown (19:34):
Yeah. So the first thing I would recommend is, you
need to make sure that theyunderstand the problem in the
same way that you do. Because ifthey don't perceive that there
is a problem, and you do thisconversation of well, how do we
engage you to problem solve isalready lost before you've
(19:55):
started, right? And this isoften one of the big challenges.
You can We talk with a lot ofvery well intentioned leaders
who will say there are noproblems in this company stop
trying to make problems wherethere are none or our
institution is a great place oflearning and inclusion. And
everything I've seen has beenreally positive. So I don't
believe that I need to doanything extra, I'm already, you
(20:17):
know, doing my best. And so youneed to start with building that
same sort of sharedunderstanding, right?
Essentially, you need to makesure that their perception of
reality aligns with yours. Andthere are lots of ways you can
do that the sort of traditionalsense is to share stories about
your experiences to help thembuild empathy, that's been done
(20:38):
forever, that will continue tobe done forever, it's not
ineffective. And there are otherways to go about it as well. I
personally prefer data and andgathering both quantitative and
qualitative data, and breakingthat down by race, gender,
demographics in general.
Usually, for corporations, Iwill look at race, gender,
abilities, sexuality, religion,and then also factors like
(21:02):
tenure, department, seniority,and so on and so forth, and say,
Where are their inequalities inthis organization? Right, like,
where are things not working?
Where do people have a disparateexperience, and the data, the
quant data shows us exactlywhat's happening. And the
(21:26):
qualitative data illustratesthose patterns with stories. So
maybe we'll see in the quantdata that there's a belonging
gap between queer and transemployees, and cisgender
heterosexual employees in that,let's say 95% of cisgender.
Heterosexual employees feel likethey belong at the institution,
(21:46):
while only 45% of queer andtrans employees feel that same
level of belonging. And let'ssay you even have the data to
localize it to let's talk abouta university setting to localize
it within Undergraduate StudentAffairs staff, right, maybe
that's where the problem is mostexacerbated. So Well, now you
(22:10):
have a really compelling story.
And if you have good qualitativedata, you can dive into those
experiences, maybe there's astory from like a Queer Student
Affairs staff member that talksabout being discriminated
against or harmful jokes, orpolicies that aren't working,
you use all of these things tosay, well, this is what we're
working with. You can't reallyargue with this. Because you
(22:30):
see, there's so much data in theaggregate that's showing these
very clear themes. And thatdoesn't tell you exactly how to
solve it. But that tells youwhat it is you're working with.
Now, leaders don't get theexcuse of, well, there's nothing
going wrong, because you havethis shared reality. Once you
start from there, it's actuallyrelatively easy, because then
you just give leaders a way tofeel good about fixing it. And
(22:53):
that's, that's the part that alot of folks get stuck on. I
think oftentimes weconceptualize of cisgender,
heterosexual white men or, youknow, privileged groups in
general, as being the target ofour initiatives, rather than
being the drivers of ourinitiatives. And that breeds
resentment, right? Like if Alex,I said, I'm here to fix you,
(23:15):
you're the problem, you're notgoing to take it well, right?
Even if the data shows thatpeople like you are the problem,
right? Like, it doesn't go over?
Well, instead of we say, Wow,this is a real challenge. As a
member of this group, I reallywant to work with you to see
what we can do to make thisexperience better for everyone.
(23:36):
Right, I want you to take thelead, I want you to get the
credit, right, like, let's,let's make everyone feel good
about making these things feelbetter. I want you to help drive
it, let's do this together, andbuild on all of the things that
you know, all the things that Iknow to fix these problems, that
framing is very different,because it gives people away to
(24:00):
now, immediately after seeingdata that is that is not great,
right? Like you feel bad, youfeel a sense of loss, you feel,
you know, a threat to your senseof self. So you immediately
follow that up with somethingpositive, you say, like, this is
something really good. Let megive you an opportunity to like
help lead the change, so thatthat threat is immediately
(24:20):
replaced with this sense ofpride. I can fix things, I can
make it better. I can work onbehalf of my org to make
everyone have a good experience.
Right? Just justpsychologically, right? Like
that makes such a hugedifference and getting people
engaged and getting peopleinvolved. And I don't see too
many people doing it, right. Butthis positivistic approach to
the work isn't just you know, mebeing soft on white men. It's
(24:44):
It's me, you know, relying onall the research we have about
what motivates behavior change,which overwhelmingly, right is
treating people like adults andmaking people feel good about
engaging in what you want themto engage in. It's very simple.
Well, actually,
Alex Iantaffi (25:01):
Oh, absolutely, as you were talking, I was, you
know, as a trauma therapist, Iwas like, Oh, it makes complete
sense, you want to be in thatplace, you know, if we buy into
Steven Porges theories ofventral vagal connection, where
we feel safe and connected toother humans, because shame
Unknown (25:17):
when I haven't thought about that since college
connections,
Alex Iantaffi (25:22):
right? Like, I mean, it sounds to me, like,
that's what you're describing,bring people into that place of
like, where, you know, we're inthis together, and we're going
to solve this problem. Andrather than putting them in the
hot seat and shaming them, whichmakes people hide our shutdown,
you know, then you get the fightflight or freeze or fun, right?
People are gonna fight you,they're gonna check out and
(25:43):
dissociate and just be there inbody but not in mind. Or, you
know, or they're gonna kind offawn over the minority.
Unknown (25:52):
So they say all the right things, right, because
they don't want to be attacked.
Right, but they don't actuallydo anything that could get them
any attention. They don't put inany real effort. That's really,
that's really,
Alex Iantaffi (26:03):
yeah. So I love what you just described, it is
very different than kind of theapproaches that I've seen that
kind of applied in the past. Inoticed also that, you know,
before when you were talkingabout the Department of Defense
issue, you know, you said how,when DEI is not done correctly,
it can actually exacerbatedivision, it can create more
(26:26):
problems, more division, moretensions. And so how can we talk
about our positionality oursocial identities, you know,
like the way we're racialized,gendered, plast, sexuality
abilities, citizenship, allthose things that you mentioned,
as well, in a way that isauthentic, that is connected?
(26:47):
And it's not just performative?
Right? Because, you know, I'massuming that the outcome we
want is not performative.
Allyship that can we want istrue equity and inclusion. So,
yeah, how can we talk about ourdifferent positionality in a way
that's conducive to thatauthenticity and connection and
change?
Unknown (27:07):
That? That's a great question. And I think it goes
back to so so let's, let's talkabout how not to do it first,
and then I'll use that totransition to how we actually
talk about it effectively.
There's been a lot of interestin the last few years in making
these identity relatedconversations more explicit. And
it's been empowering for a lotof people, right? There's this
(27:30):
new wave of talking about raceexplicitly of talking about
disability, religion, sexualityexplicitly, especially for, you
know, folks who are from hishistorically disadvantaged
communities, right. Getting totalk about their identities has
been enormously empowering. Andwe actually have some really
(27:52):
interesting research from the2000s. On the multiculturalism
movement. If you remember,around the time, there was this
huge fad, if you will, to reallyfocus on like the flags and the
food and like culturalcelebrations, they're a little
less popular now. Think Thankyou. No, thank goodness, but it
(28:15):
was all about celebratingidentity. But here's the thing,
it wasn't about celebratingeveryone's identity. It was
about making space formarginalized employees to take
pride in their own identitiesand celebrate them, which was
great. And the big downfall ofthose initiatives was that they
(28:35):
still made no space to talkabout masculinity. They made no
spaces to talk about whiteness,they made no spaces to talk
about being cisgender andheterosexual. And so all of
these privileged identities,which we know from lots of
research, right, one of thebenefits, but also the curses of
having privileges, never needingto name it. All these groups
didn't have a way to talk abouttheir identities. And so
(28:59):
paradoxically, they felt a senseof exclusion. Right? There's
events for everyone except forme. And that sense of exclusion
eventually bred contempt, andthat contempt eventually bred
backlash. And then well, youknow, that was the end of that.
Now, I think there's somethingto take away from that though,
right? Like, we shouldn't justtake away like, oh, you know,
the white men ruined it foreveryone again, instead, we need
(29:22):
to take a different approach tothis work that says identity is
critical, and everyone has one.
And when we talk about identity,we need to do so in a way that
recognizes that we're notplaying oppression Olympics
here. We're genuinely trying tounderstand how our positionality
our unique positionality impactswho we are, impacts how we
(29:46):
navigate systems and gives usinsight into building better
ones. This is one of the biggestproblems I see with identity
related con conversations. Itsidentity for the sake of of
ending up Higher or lower onthis oppression Olympics, you
know, poll, right? Like it's,it's absolutely the wrong way to
think about it saying like,Well, I'm a queer, trans, non
(30:10):
binary neurodivergent person ofcolor. So I check all these
marginalized boxes, right? Butunfortunately, I'm like I grew
up upper middle class. So Idon't have that marginalization.
And then maybe someone else islike, Oh, well, I have all the
same identities as you, but I'mpoor. So I'm more marginalized,
(30:31):
meaning you should listen to memore, right? And it turns into
this really weird. I mean, youknow, oppression Olympics,
right, this weird competition tosay, whose voice actually
matters. And those conversationsare toxic, they get in the way
of doing anything they makepeople who have more privileged
identities feel horrible, right.
And they get in the way ofmovement building and real
(30:53):
change. So instead, you know, weneed to move towards a place
where yes, we talk openly aboutour identities, but also our
privileged ones. We also talkabout, you know, all of the
experiences we had that were notmarginalized, but not for this
weird abstract, like, let's justshare everything about
ourselves, but specifically fora purpose. And that purpose
(31:14):
should be at least in aworkplace setting, helping to
understand how our currentworkplace impacts all of us, so
that we can understand how tobuild a better one, right? Not
identity disclosure, for its ownsake. But for the sake of making
better organizations, that needsto be the way we do it. So I'm
(31:36):
not out here, listing 20identities to seem cool. I'm
here listing my identities,because those identities
intersect in a way that gives mea really interesting experience
in a workplace, thoseidentities, let me analyze,
let's say you know how certainpolicies impact certain groups
of people, or how certainprocesses might leave certain
(31:56):
groups of people out, so that wecan design better. And if we can
move towards this newperspective of identity as a
tool for us to understand theworld around us, rather than
just a way for us to measure howgood or bad we are, which I
think is extremely unproductive,then we can make more space for
everybody to have a place inthat conversation. Right? We can
(32:19):
make it so I don't know, acisgender, heterosexual white
man can say I'm cisgender,heterosexual and white, and not
feel any sense of shame fromthat. And just say, because of
these identities, this is how Iperceive the organization. And
then someone else can say, well,that's really interesting,
because I don't see it that way.
(32:39):
As a person with very differentidentities, this is how I
perceive the organization. Andthen maybe they can say, Wow,
those are very differentexperiences. How is it that our
existing processes or policiesor culture or strategy can lend
itself to, to two differentexperiences? How do we reconcile
that? How do we do better? Howcan we design better? That's the
(33:00):
role that identity should havein these conversations.
Alex Iantaffi (33:04):
I love that it's so much more relational, right?
Because I've been at thismeeting where everybody's like,
almost like reciting theiridentity, weird. It is weird,
you know, you go around, andthen I'm like, Oh, my God, did I
remember all my identities?
Right? You know, and also, it'slike, then there isn't always
the
Unknown (33:23):
so what? Right? Yeah, what do you do with it?
Alex Iantaffi (33:27):
And there isn't always that awareness that goes
with it. Okay, so now we'velisted all our identities, but
then we never, we don't talkabout it, right? We don't
reflect on how that impacts thedynamic in the group or what's
happening. So this is so muchmore complex, but relational,
right, in some ways,
Lily Zheng (33:46):
right? And, you know, if I could go so far as to
say, I think this is the visionof why it is people started
talking about identity in thefirst place, but we didn't focus
enough on that. And over time,the act of disclosure became
everything, right, like peopleforgotten why it is we need to
(34:07):
disclose identity and just turnit into some weird game of
listing all of our identities ona on a piece of paper, right,
like, and, and stripped all thepower out of him. And if
anything, right, like, it evenbecame toxic, right? It came to
a place where like, well if youdon't share your identities, and
we judge you or if you have moreprivileged identities than we
(34:27):
judge you and it all goes backto this you know, horrible mess
of blame and shame and and, youknow, social comparison and I
don't know, right, like it's,it's not good for people. It's
not good for organizations. And,frankly, it's not effective and
the DEI spade is for helpingpeople move on and build better
and and do better.
Alex Iantaffi (34:49):
Oh, absolutely.
It's definitely not conducive tochange. In my experience. It's
almost like a confession here.
Here are all my identities andnow have been a good ally
because of you Let's settle thisthing. So right, yes, that
doesn't change anything. Well,given that this is gender
stories, let's get into gender alittle bit more. And I hope it's
(35:09):
okay to get a little bit morepersonal. And you know, I know
your pronouns, but I don't knowyour identities. But I'm curious
about are your gender impactsthe work that you do and what
kind of challenges andopportunities you've encountered
because of your gender. And ofcourse, when we talk about
gender, we can never separate itfrom all the other aspects of
our identities, right? Whetheryou know, our, our class, their
(35:34):
sexuality, how we areracialized. So when I say
gender, I also say all thoseother things that kind of are
impossible to separate in someways.
Lily Zheng (35:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
But focusing on genderprimarily, I think my answer to
this question has changed overthe years, which I guess is not
super uncommon for trans people,I am trans. But I would say
given that I transitioned reallyearly, and spent most of my
professional career as a transwomen, I think, most of my
(36:04):
experiences having my genderimpact my work was was at the
beginning of my career as atrans woman or trans feminine
person, I think, I spent a lotof time thinking about my gender
expression, and my genderpresentation and all sorts of
things from how I talked to howI related to people. Like I
(36:24):
think I spent a lot more effortto like pitch my voice. Right, I
was performing gender a lot morein that way. And I would say
that I was impacted by a lot ofthe societal expectations around
women, right? Which certainlytrans women face as well. I
think it's complicated, becauseI'm also East Asian, right. And
(36:48):
there are additionalprescriptive stereotypes about
East Asians, right, being docileor quiet or soft spoken, or
referential or whatnot. And I'msure it comes across. But
that's, that's not exactly mypersonality. I'm pretty out
there. I will say what I want tosay so early on in my career, I
(37:10):
think there were some peoplewho, given how I looked and
presented were like, Oh, I wasexpecting you to be a lot more
soft spoken. Like, you're kindof in my face. And I'm like,
Yeah, I guess I am. However, Ithink that's changed a lot in
the last few years. Namely, inthat I don't identify as a trans
woman these these days, I, youknow, I, right now, I would
(37:33):
probably identify as like a nonbinary trans femme, maybe the
terms change all the time. Andsometimes my sense of gender
changes all the time, too. Butit's been weird, because since
changing my my pronouns, andchanging how I identify, I would
say I'm treated a littledifferently than I used to be.
(37:56):
And I think it's just that noone knows how to classify me in
terms of gender, so they justdon't try. Which I feel bad for
saying, but it's kind of nice.
Like, I don't feel like I getjudged by masculine stereotypes.
And I also feel like I don't getjudged by feminine stereotypes.
So I don't know whether it'sbecause I lucked out into some
(38:18):
magic secret sweetspot of genderand race and whatnot. But um,
yeah, I don't have too manyexperiences in the last few
years, where I feel like I wasreally judged on the basis of my
gender. And I can certainlyhypothesize why Right? Like, I
think, maybe like, like, I'mstill visually Asian, right.
And, in general, there arestereotypes that say that
(38:42):
Asians, you know, are typicallynot as outspoken. So, maybe the
fact that I am outspoken, sortof makes that a novelty. And
maybe, like, breaks people'sbrains or something, right. But
Asians are also seen as nonthreatening, and me being a
agentic and confidence, which,you know, that behavior would
(39:07):
probably be seen as threatening,if it was from, let's say, you
know, like a black man, forexample, because of my
positionality, I can get awaywith being competent. And, and
sometimes I would say, a littleaggressive with with how I talk,
and not be seen as asthreatening, right? So maybe,
maybe it's some something likethat. But it's really hard to
(39:28):
sort of fit yourself in as aperson into all of these
theories about race and genderand whatnot. The simple answer I
can give is, it doesn't seemlike I am treated negatively on
the basis of my race and genderthese days. Part of that is I've
taken some personal efforts toto disambiguate myself from
(39:51):
being seen in like hypergendered ways, both in terms of
like, how I talk about myselfand how I relate to the work
that I do, but also just Likehow I've tried to position my
career, because I used to, whenI was a trans fam, and identify
this one, I used to do transinclusion trainings. And like a
(40:11):
lot of trans people who didtrans inclusion trainings, I
lead with my own story, right?
Like that was how I connectedwith people. So, you know, to
frame it very crudely, I go intoa room and cry in front of a
bunch of sis people all the timeabout my experience of gender.
And I'm lucky enough and I haveon purpose, trying to no longer
do that. Like, I hate that,like, I don't like going into a
(40:33):
room and performing my trauma.
Like now people bring me into aroom because they want the best
DEI strategist around and Ithink I'm that right? Like, I've
tried really hard to specializein a direction that doesn't
require that I perform mytrauma. And as a result, it's
not that my identity doesn'timpact my work. But I lead
primarily with my ideas and mythought leadership and the work
(40:57):
that I do, rather than, youknow, I fit all of these boxes,
and I check all of these boxesand all that, right, like I've
tried to move away from it.
Alex Iantaffi (41:06):
I love that because I think that it can be
so easy to get caught up intothat having to perform our
stories or our trauma, when wedo inclusion trainings. And I
think personally, as somebodywho also sometimes does
consultancy and training, havemoved away from that to in a
very much actually start fromasking people to think about
(41:29):
their own gender, whichsometimes sets them back a
little bit because I'm like, Oh,we thought we brought you in to
talk about that, or people thatwere there were trans.
Lily Zheng (41:37):
The Trans people are the ones who have gender, we
don't right.
Alex Iantaffi (41:41):
Now you're asking me all those questions about
gender, which maybe I've thoughtabout or not, and I'm a little
uncomfortable, but also nowwe're all there's something that
couldn't access as well, rightnow, it's not this other reading
experience. And so yeah, therewas, as you were talking, I was
resonating with some of thethings you were saying which and
(42:02):
I feel like I could go onforever and in this
conversation, but I want to berespectful of your time. So is
there anything that we haven'ttalked about that you would
really like to share with thegender stories, listeners, about
either your book or dei work ingeneral, or really anything that
you want to share with thelisteners?
Lily Zheng (42:22):
Oh, man, but there's so much. I really liked what you
had to say earlier about askingpeople their personal
relationship to gender, in a lotof ways that actually mirrors
some approaches that I take withhelping, let's say, men, or you
know, folks with otherprivileged identities, grapple
(42:43):
with those identities in theworkplace. And I frequently will
lead a conversation thatessentially says men like, I'd
love if you could teach us aboutgender. And they often pause,
like, you know, they werenominated for something, they
have no expertise. And they'rejust like, Well, my wife knows a
(43:04):
lot about gender. I don't knowanything about gender, right? I
remember I was talking to anexecutive who says, Well, I
thought I knew a lot about theworkplace. For example, I don't
know anything about gender. ButI know a lot about the workplace
and how promotions work. But mywife has been telling me about
her experience of gender, andhow maybe the workplace isn't
(43:25):
what I thought it was given thather experiences are so different
from mine. And I push backagainst this person, and I said,
Look, your wife understandsgender and knows how to work how
the workplace functions forpeople of her gender. And you
also understand gender, youknow, how the workplace
functions for people of yourgender. And this is something
(43:48):
difficult, it's that, you know,I mentioned this about privilege
earlier, it's a it's a doublebladed sword, right? Like, you
don't think too often about howyour privilege is itself. A
unique experience, right, likemasculinity is a unique
experience, and being able tounpack exactly how you being a
man, are you being white, or youbeing upper class? Are you being
(44:12):
non disabled, or cisgender, or,or heterosexual? How all that
affected your experience, not inany good or bad way, just how it
you know, impacted yourexperience is enormously
powerful, because it gives youinsight into the world around
you. I tell everyone, everyone'sown experiences your own
(44:34):
positionality gives you avaluable but incomplete insight
into the world. valuable butincomplete, right? Everyone is
valuable. Everyone's experiencesare valuable, but no one's
experiences are perfectlyrepresentative of everything.
This is why we need to betalking together not to you
(44:55):
know, determine who's worthy ornot or who's a good person or a
bad person. But so we can puttogether all of these disparate
pieces of the puzzle and get aclearer understanding of the
world around us. Right, itreminds me of this teaching
concept called Jigsaw learning,where you give a roomful of
students different parts of theproblem, and different
(45:16):
information they need, and say,figure it out. And students will
start by themselves and say,there's something wrong here, I
can't figure it out. Right. Andthat's by design, it forces them
to come together and share ideasand share information, and put
all of these parts together sothat they can figure out the
problem, I would say gender, andidentity in general, is exactly
(45:40):
the same, right? You need tohave everyone coming together
with their experiences so thatyou can accurately understand
the state of the organization orthe state of the department or
the team or the world even,right. So you can work together
and problem solve. And I likethinking about it in this way.
Because it gives peopleespecially people with
privileged identities are reallyvaluable place in this work. It
(46:03):
doesn't center them. In fact, itdoesn't center anyone. Right? It
says simply, we need everyonehere to be able to do this work
effectively.
Alex Iantaffi (46:13):
Yeah, I love that. Well, any centers, the
work, the outcome, right, theoutcome is equity. Its
inclusion, like, and I lovethat. I feel like I could say so
much more, but I'm gonna take adeep breath and control my
desire to have this conversationfor the next three hours. And
instead, I'm gonna ask you, ifpeople want to find your book,
(46:37):
or more about your work, or evenwant to book you for training,
like how can they get in touchwith you where they can find out
more about the wonderful workthat you do?
Lily Zheng (46:47):
Yeah, well, you can find me on my website at
lilyzheng.com. And we canprobably put that information in
the summary. And you can followmy work most easily on LinkedIn.
Just search me Lily Zheng. Andyeah, there's a lot there. I
post multiple times a week, Iput everything I do up on
(47:07):
LinkedIn. So those are your besttwo places to learn more about
me and engage with my content.
And I love getting messages andDMS from folks, so please reach
out.
Alex Iantaffi (47:17):
That's wonderful.
Well, thank you so much, Lily,for coming to gender stories
today. I really appreciateeverything you've shared. And
maybe we'll just have to have apart two for all the other
pieces of the conversation. Wethen get to today.
Lily Zheng (47:30):
Perhaps perhaps, yeah, maybe you so much for
having me
Alex Iantaffi (47:34):
when the next book is out. Well, thank you so
much for coming today. Thanks.
And dear listeners as ever,thank you for supporting gender
stories. And if you've enjoyedthis episode, please share away
and by Lily's Book DEIdeconstructed and check out
their work. Thank you so much.
There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you can guess and
some I've only hinted at Soplease lend me your ear...
Narrator (00:26):
Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello, and welcometo Gender Stories with your
host, Dr. Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:34):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of
gender stories. I know that wesay that I'm incredibly excited,
but I am because every guest onthe show is so special. And
today I have the honor to bejoined by Lily Zheng, who's an
author and also a sought afterDiversity, Equity and Inclusion
speaker, strategist, andorganizational consultant who
(00:58):
specializes in systemic change,to turn positive dei intention
that diversity, equity andinclusion intentions into
positive dei outcomes forworkplaces and everyone in them.
Lily is a dedicated changemaker,an advocate named at Forbes DNI
(01:18):
trailblazer and LinkedIn topvoice in racial equity. Lily
recognizes the flashy one timetraining sessions that work and
work with organizationsdedicated to the time and
commitment that is needed to doDiversity, Equity and Inclusion
right to undo social inequalityand injustice, and create
(01:38):
organizational cultures that arerich with collaboration,
respect, resilience andinnovation. Lilia has been
featured in and writes for mediaoutlets, including the New York
Times and PR, Harvard BusinessReview, and HR executive. They
are the co author of gender andambiguity in the workplace. And
(02:00):
second book, the ethical sellout their book dei
deconstructed, which I think wasforthcoming when I was contacted
by it's now out, I believe andpublish. It's been out for a
couple of months, I know reallyexcited, so dei deconstructed
your no nonsense guide to doingthe work and doing it right. In
this book clearly presents acomprehensive set of solutions
(02:23):
that hold organizations andtheir leaders accountable,
laying out the path for anyonewith any background to become a
more effective dei practitioner,Ally and leader. DEI
econstructed is being releasedlast November from Berrett
Koehler publishers. And then ifyou want more information about
Lily, you can visit theirwebsite, which is in the summary
(02:46):
of the apps. And also at the endof the episode, we'll talk more
about where you can find thiswork. You can see why I'm so
excited. Lily, you've beenfeatured in so many outlets and
you do such amazing work. Thankyou for coming, and being on
gender stories. I reallyappreciate it.
Lily Zheng (03:02):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really
looking forward to thisconversation today.
Alex Iantaffi (03:07):
Thank you. So let's just start with the
listeners who don't knowanything about the field of
diversity, equity and inclusion.
And I wonder if you can maybegive just a brief overview of
what that means for people whohave never encountered kind of
dei work.
Lily Zheng (03:26):
I would say dei work is a relatively young field that
tries to make organization sothink about corporations,
universities, nonprofits, youname it into places that are
more diverse, right, so theyhave more representation, they
(03:48):
are there. They're betterrepresented by women and people
of color and disabled folks, andqueer and trans folks more
inclusive, and that they'rebetter respectful places to
work. People there feel thatthey're treated fairly people
feel a sense of belonging atwork, and equitable in that
(04:08):
folks are being paid fairlyfolks are being treated fairly,
there's no discrimination, andeveryone can thrive in the
workplace. These three acronyms,or rather the three letters in
the acronym Dei, and you mayhave seen many of the siblings
to this this moniker, which is,you know, deiba deij, right.
(04:30):
There's many other differentacronyms but essentially, all of
it speaks to this ongoing workof making organizations into
better places that work for morepeople.
Alex Iantaffi (04:42):
And that is wonderful, and I love our ideal
that sounds. And I know thatthere have been many critiques
as well of the I work and I knowas somebody who used to be an
academic and employed byuniversities, I sat personally
for many dei sessions. It wereactually more traumatizing for
(05:03):
those of us who were aware ofminoritized identity somewhere
in the room. And I know thatespecially several folks of
color really criticized theframework in I feel that in some
ways, you know, even the titleof your book, DEI deconstructed
in some way kind of addressesthat to some degree. So can you
(05:23):
talk a little bit about how youfeel that DEI can work best and
really live up to the beautifulvision, right of diversity,
equity and inclusion, we wantthe result we want the vision.
And yet sometimes it can feellike a DEI workshop is like a,
you know, a checkbox? Andemployers like, oh, great, we
(05:48):
did the DEI training check.
We're good. And now we don'tdiscriminate. And that's not how
it works, right?
Lily Zheng (05:55):
Absolutely, absolutely. So I'll go ahead and
start off by saying, I fullyagree with that perspective. In
fact, I am. I'm a frequentcritic of the DEI space. And it
sounds weird given that I'm anactive practitioner, and I spend
a lot of time doing this work.
And so many of the critiques ofthe EI are absolutely correct,
(06:19):
in that a lot of dei work ismore about intentions than it is
about outcomes. It's more aboutwhat training can we deploy? Or
what nice words can we say in aspeech and less about how can we
actually ensure that we enddiscrimination that we create
(06:40):
well being that we create theseoutcomes of diversity, equity
and inclusion? Now, how do weactually get there now that the
very cheeky answer is like,well, you should read the book.
But some of the ideas in thebook right, just to share more
with listeners are that first,we need to recognize that the
(07:01):
big failure of the DEI industryover the last few decades has
been a failure to focus our workon outcomes. So very few folks
in the DEI space, are able tosay this is the future we want
to create and operationalize it,they're not able to actually
identify, you know, how muchrepresentation are we going for?
(07:22):
How do we measure inclusion? Howdo we ensure that we create
equity equity, how so for whom,in what way beyond pay equity,
what other kinds of equityexist? And these foundational,
fundamental questions areneeded, so that we can do the
very basic work of holdingpeople accountable? Right,
(07:43):
something that we say a lot inthe corporate world is measure
what matters, and nobodymeasures Dei. That's a problem,
right? Because that means nomatter how much energy you put
in, at best, you're only goingto be able to say, well, I felt
good about that training. Idon't care if you feel good
about trainings, did they work?
(08:03):
Right? Like, did they fixthings. And the core argument
that I want to make is we can'teven start having that
conversation until we can alignon what it is we're trying to
achieve, how we measure thesethings. And then also, the very
common pitfalls that have madeit so quite a lot of folks,
especially folks who aremarginalized. Just don't trustee
(08:28):
ei work right? We've all or manyof us have sat through a dei
training that at best, we feltlike maybe is a c plus, right in
terms of quality. We've satthrough trainings where people
just read through long lists ofdo's and don'ts and trainings
where people seem like they'remore interested in protecting
the company against legalliability than actually fixing
any real issues. We've satthrough trainings where
(08:50):
facilitators will bring upreally hot button issues, but
not do anything to facilitatethe space, which, like you
mentioned, ends up oftentimes inlike real harm and real trauma
and not anything close tohealing or reparation or, or
improvement. So I thinkrecognizing that the field time
(09:11):
in the field of dei is just alittle bit messed up needs to be
step one of getting anywherefrom where we currently are
right, like we we have to facethe music, the trainings, the
one off talks, right, like thisstuff isn't working. It's never
worked. And we actually have alot of data and studies from the
(09:35):
last 30 and 40 years showingjust how these things keep
failing. Now, that hasn'tstopped people from doing them
over and over and over again.
But I want through this book andmy work, to put forward a
different way of doing Dei,right, a way that's grounded in
data, a way that's accountable,a way that's led by marginalized
(09:57):
communities a way that rebuildstrust within companies and orgs
in general, a way that leverageseverybody inside of an org to
work together on creating theseoutcomes. Yeah, so I think
that's, that's the first bigthing, right? Like, recognize
that things aren't great. Andthere is a way to do it right?
Alex Iantaffi (10:20):
That is really wonderful. I love that. Could
you share a little bit moreabout what elements can improve
kind of dei trainings? Right?
You talked about data, youtalked about outcome and
accountability. I love all ofthat. And like you said, step
one, this kind of recognizinghow, in many ways DEI has
failed. And so how, you know,what is step two? You know, I
(10:43):
know, I want people to read thebook. So you don't have to give
away
Unknown (10:48):
Oh, no. All of it away.
I'm giving it all away. So,look. So if step one is
recognizing all the ways inwhich the AI has failed, we can
actually reverse engineer how todo it right, just from that
answer, right? So gosh, thereare so many examples. I can't
name them all. But one of thebiggest examples of a dei
initiative that failed wasactually undertaken by the
(11:10):
Department of Defense in the US,right, the US military,
essentially, in the 70s, and80s. And this was one of the
most expensive dei initiativesof all time, most people haven't
heard about it, which is wild,because they trained nearly a
million practitioners, theytrain so many people to engage
(11:32):
in this work. They had aninstitute, they funded hundreds
of hours of training for theseinternal practitioners that were
going to go out into themilitary, and lead these sorts
of conversations about race,these courageous conversations
about difference and race andinequality and all that. It was
(11:52):
very ambitious, especially, youknow, in the 80s. And it was one
of the biggest, most resoundingfailures of all time in Dei.
Why, right? We just have to askwhy. Right? Like, because most
people haven't heard about this.
It. You know, most people assumeif you spend a bunch of money on
(12:13):
Dei, you train tons of people,it's rigorous. It's got to work,
right? So how come it failed?
Well, we can look at that oneexample. And see just what
happened. One, the practitionersused techniques that blamed and
shamed their their participants,they put typically white men in
hot seats and would grill them,they would say, Joe, or James or
(12:34):
Michael or whatever, right? Likeyou're a racist. Let's unpack
everything you do that makes youa racist. And the goal of that
exercise was to get people toconfront their biases and become
better people, and become moreself aware and grow and all of
these lofty things. Now,unfortunately, we know now, what
(12:54):
happens if you put someone in aseat and call them names is they
do the exact opposite of allthat. There's backlash effects,
there's resentment, there'sfrustration, there's anger. And
they usually take that out notonly on the workshop
facilitators, but other membersof marginalized communities. And
so that was big problem. Numberone, the fact that these sorts
(13:15):
of conversations exacerbatedtensions rather than reducing
them. And then problem two,given these backlash effects, it
turns out commanders within themilitary started to feel like
they were losing control oftheir workforces, that there was
a lot of tension going on. Andso they tried to take back
control from thesepractitioners, and they
(13:36):
sidelined the DEI practitionersand made them advisors. And then
what ended up happening is, overtime, these trainings turned
into check checkbox activities,bureaucratic hassles that people
had to do to fulfill somerequirement each year, the
content gotten more and morewatered down, so that it
wouldn't offend people, whichdid avoid backlash effects, but
(13:58):
it also avoided any helpfuleffects. And the spirits of the
trainings was fully diluted tothe point where at some point, I
believe in the 90s, the trainingwas rolled into some broader
sort of staff support trainingthat to this day probably
exists. And it was reallyexpensive. A lot of people were
trained, right, and it failed,resoundingly. Now, the reason
(14:22):
why I bring this up, it's almostlike you go into a corporation
right now and you see echoes ofthose sorts of trainings. You
see some practitioners, youknow, not really understand that
it's not the best idea to beputting people in positions of
power into hot seats andgrilling them. I'm sure it feels
good. I've done it once ortwice. It feels very
vindicating. Not great over thelong term. Oh, something also
(14:45):
about the military. They tookspecific efforts to avoid
measuring the impact of theirtraining. They were forbidden
from measuring the impact oftheir training. There was this
specific directives don'tmeasure this. I don't know what
people were thinking. But we seea lot of that today. Also,
right? There's this sort ofnaive expectation that whether
(15:07):
or not the training works, wedon't want to know, we just want
to fire and forget to just throwthis training out into the world
and hope it does something. Andovertime with the US military,
what we actually found, or whatresearchers later found, like
10, or 20 years after the factis that it increased disc
discrimination and decreasedrepresentation, it literally had
(15:27):
the opposite desired effect. Andwe're still doing the same thing
in companies today. Right? Sowhat are the takeaways? What can
we do that's opposite from that?
One, we need to make people feelgood about D is very basic,
right? blame and shame doesn'twork. When you try to blame
people for inequality, when youtry to shame people for having
(15:49):
certain privileges. Not onlydoes it make them not feel
great, but more importantly, itdoesn't actually change their
behavior. In fact, it can leadthem to lash out in the exact
opposite way that you want,which makes things worse for
marginalized groups. Instead,right, we need to be approaching
this from positive lens andgiving people ways to engage in
(16:10):
dei work, that helped themmaintain a sense of dignity, and
to feel a sense of pride intheir work. And, and, you know,
efforts. That's thing numberone, too, we need to measure
what we're doing, we need tomake sure that when we deploy
interventions, that we can tracktheir outcomes, we know what it
is they're trying to do, right?
You know, you you've spent a lotof time in academia, and
(16:32):
academics are better at thisthan non academics, maybe not
incredible. But in certainfields, at least, there's more
of a tradition of accountabilityof experiments of not assuming
that you're going to find whatyou're looking for. Right? We
need that same sort of rigorwith the AI work, we can't just
(16:54):
throw interventions into thevoid and expect that they're
going to work, we need to holdourselves and the people we work
with accountable, right. Andfinally, you can't do any of
this work with a one and done itjust doesn't work. There's
nothing you can do over 90minutes that undoes the daily
sort of conditioning, brokenpolicies, processes and systems,
right, deeply entrenchedcorporate cultures, you don't
(17:18):
fix any of that in 60 minutes,90 minutes or even two hours, it
has to be an ongoing effortthat's fully accountable, that,
like I mentioned, is stillpositive and gives people a way
to feel good. And all of thisneeds to come together in an
initiative that is wellinitiative, sorry, well
resourced, that is wellsupported, and that everyone
(17:39):
understands its purpose forexistence, right? Those are just
some of the takeaways we canlearn from history because we
have a long history of folksdoing it wrong, which I think is
a rich source of learning,right? I firmly believe that
history is is the greatestteacher, because even though
History doesn't repeat itself,per se, it usually rhymes. And
we know from what we're seeingright now that a lot of our
(18:03):
problems are ones that have beenaddressed before.
Alex Iantaffi (18:09):
Absolutely, thank you so much for that, that was
so informative, especially assomebody as an academic who has
sat through a lot of those tickboxes. Exercise, I was like,
that sounds so much better, Ican imagine how much deeper and
more meaningful the work wouldbe also, if it's ongoing, if
there is accountability, if it'soutcome focused, like you said,
(18:31):
and, and you mentioned, youknow, cisgender, heterosexual
white man at one point, youknow, being put in the hot seat
and being shamed and, and in away, for better or for worse,
corporations. And definitelyacademia is still full of
cisgender heterosexual whitemen. And so how can this work?
(18:51):
kind of help? Those folks who,in some ways are at the pinnacle
of privilege to leverage theirprivilege and power for change?
Are there specific strategiesthat work better than others to
kind of engage? Why cisgendermen because in some way, there's
almost like this defensivenessor kind of rejection of di work
(19:15):
straight away. From some, youknow, of course, not all, no
solution or category is amonolith. But are there ways
that work better to kind of kindof bring in those cis white men
and help them leverage theirpower for good for one of a
better word?
Unknown (19:34):
Yeah. So the first thing I would recommend is, you
need to make sure that theyunderstand the problem in the
same way that you do. Because ifthey don't perceive that there
is a problem, and you do thisconversation of well, how do we
engage you to problem solve isalready lost before you've
(19:55):
started, right? And this isoften one of the big challenges.
You can We talk with a lot ofvery well intentioned leaders
who will say there are noproblems in this company stop
trying to make problems wherethere are none or our
institution is a great place oflearning and inclusion. And
everything I've seen has beenreally positive. So I don't
believe that I need to doanything extra, I'm already, you
(20:17):
know, doing my best. And so youneed to start with building that
same sort of sharedunderstanding, right?
Essentially, you need to makesure that their perception of
reality aligns with yours. Andthere are lots of ways you can
do that the sort of traditionalsense is to share stories about
your experiences to help thembuild empathy, that's been done
(20:38):
forever, that will continue tobe done forever, it's not
ineffective. And there are otherways to go about it as well. I
personally prefer data and andgathering both quantitative and
qualitative data, and breakingthat down by race, gender,
demographics in general.
Usually, for corporations, Iwill look at race, gender,
abilities, sexuality, religion,and then also factors like
(21:02):
tenure, department, seniority,and so on and so forth, and say,
Where are their inequalities inthis organization? Right, like,
where are things not working?
Where do people have a disparateexperience, and the data, the
quant data shows us exactlywhat's happening. And the
(21:26):
qualitative data illustratesthose patterns with stories. So
maybe we'll see in the quantdata that there's a belonging
gap between queer and transemployees, and cisgender
heterosexual employees in that,let's say 95% of cisgender.
Heterosexual employees feel likethey belong at the institution,
(21:46):
while only 45% of queer andtrans employees feel that same
level of belonging. And let'ssay you even have the data to
localize it to let's talk abouta university setting to localize
it within Undergraduate StudentAffairs staff, right, maybe
that's where the problem is mostexacerbated. So Well, now you
(22:10):
have a really compelling story.
And if you have good qualitativedata, you can dive into those
experiences, maybe there's astory from like a Queer Student
Affairs staff member that talksabout being discriminated
against or harmful jokes, orpolicies that aren't working,
you use all of these things tosay, well, this is what we're
working with. You can't reallyargue with this. Because you
(22:30):
see, there's so much data in theaggregate that's showing these
very clear themes. And thatdoesn't tell you exactly how to
solve it. But that tells youwhat it is you're working with.
Now, leaders don't get theexcuse of, well, there's nothing
going wrong, because you havethis shared reality. Once you
start from there, it's actuallyrelatively easy, because then
you just give leaders a way tofeel good about fixing it. And
(22:53):
that's, that's the part that alot of folks get stuck on. I
think oftentimes weconceptualize of cisgender,
heterosexual white men or, youknow, privileged groups in
general, as being the target ofour initiatives, rather than
being the drivers of ourinitiatives. And that breeds
resentment, right? Like if Alex,I said, I'm here to fix you,
(23:15):
you're the problem, you're notgoing to take it well, right?
Even if the data shows thatpeople like you are the problem,
right? Like, it doesn't go over?
Well, instead of we say, Wow,this is a real challenge. As a
member of this group, I reallywant to work with you to see
what we can do to make thisexperience better for everyone.
(23:36):
Right, I want you to take thelead, I want you to get the
credit, right, like, let's,let's make everyone feel good
about making these things feelbetter. I want you to help drive
it, let's do this together, andbuild on all of the things that
you know, all the things that Iknow to fix these problems, that
framing is very different,because it gives people away to
(24:00):
now, immediately after seeingdata that is that is not great,
right? Like you feel bad, youfeel a sense of loss, you feel,
you know, a threat to your senseof self. So you immediately
follow that up with somethingpositive, you say, like, this is
something really good. Let megive you an opportunity to like
help lead the change, so thatthat threat is immediately
(24:20):
replaced with this sense ofpride. I can fix things, I can
make it better. I can work onbehalf of my org to make
everyone have a good experience.
Right? Just justpsychologically, right? Like
that makes such a hugedifference and getting people
engaged and getting peopleinvolved. And I don't see too
many people doing it, right. Butthis positivistic approach to
the work isn't just you know, mebeing soft on white men. It's
(24:44):
It's me, you know, relying onall the research we have about
what motivates behavior change,which overwhelmingly, right is
treating people like adults andmaking people feel good about
engaging in what you want themto engage in. It's very simple.
Well, actually,
Alex Iantaffi (25:01):
Oh, absolutely, as you were talking, I was, you
know, as a trauma therapist, Iwas like, Oh, it makes complete
sense, you want to be in thatplace, you know, if we buy into
Steven Porges theories ofventral vagal connection, where
we feel safe and connected toother humans, because shame
Unknown (25:17):
when I haven't thought about that since college
connections,
Alex Iantaffi (25:22):
right? Like, I mean, it sounds to me, like,
that's what you're describing,bring people into that place of
like, where, you know, we're inthis together, and we're going
to solve this problem. Andrather than putting them in the
hot seat and shaming them, whichmakes people hide our shutdown,
you know, then you get the fightflight or freeze or fun, right?
People are gonna fight you,they're gonna check out and
(25:43):
dissociate and just be there inbody but not in mind. Or, you
know, or they're gonna kind offawn over the minority.
Unknown (25:52):
So they say all the right things, right, because
they don't want to be attacked.
Right, but they don't actuallydo anything that could get them
any attention. They don't put inany real effort. That's really,
that's really,
Alex Iantaffi (26:03):
yeah. So I love what you just described, it is
very different than kind of theapproaches that I've seen that
kind of applied in the past. Inoticed also that, you know,
before when you were talkingabout the Department of Defense
issue, you know, you said how,when DEI is not done correctly,
it can actually exacerbatedivision, it can create more
(26:26):
problems, more division, moretensions. And so how can we talk
about our positionality oursocial identities, you know,
like the way we're racialized,gendered, plast, sexuality
abilities, citizenship, allthose things that you mentioned,
as well, in a way that isauthentic, that is connected?
(26:47):
And it's not just performative?
Right? Because, you know, I'massuming that the outcome we
want is not performative.
Allyship that can we want istrue equity and inclusion. So,
yeah, how can we talk about ourdifferent positionality in a way
that's conducive to thatauthenticity and connection and
change?
Unknown (27:07):
That? That's a great question. And I think it goes
back to so so let's, let's talkabout how not to do it first,
and then I'll use that totransition to how we actually
talk about it effectively.
There's been a lot of interestin the last few years in making
these identity relatedconversations more explicit. And
it's been empowering for a lotof people, right? There's this
(27:30):
new wave of talking about raceexplicitly of talking about
disability, religion, sexualityexplicitly, especially for, you
know, folks who are from hishistorically disadvantaged
communities, right. Getting totalk about their identities has
been enormously empowering. Andwe actually have some really
(27:52):
interesting research from the2000s. On the multiculturalism
movement. If you remember,around the time, there was this
huge fad, if you will, to reallyfocus on like the flags and the
food and like culturalcelebrations, they're a little
less popular now. Think Thankyou. No, thank goodness, but it
(28:15):
was all about celebratingidentity. But here's the thing,
it wasn't about celebratingeveryone's identity. It was
about making space formarginalized employees to take
pride in their own identitiesand celebrate them, which was
great. And the big downfall ofthose initiatives was that they
(28:35):
still made no space to talkabout masculinity. They made no
spaces to talk about whiteness,they made no spaces to talk
about being cisgender andheterosexual. And so all of
these privileged identities,which we know from lots of
research, right, one of thebenefits, but also the curses of
having privileges, never needingto name it. All these groups
didn't have a way to talk abouttheir identities. And so
(28:59):
paradoxically, they felt a senseof exclusion. Right? There's
events for everyone except forme. And that sense of exclusion
eventually bred contempt, andthat contempt eventually bred
backlash. And then well, youknow, that was the end of that.
Now, I think there's somethingto take away from that though,
right? Like, we shouldn't justtake away like, oh, you know,
the white men ruined it foreveryone again, instead, we need
(29:22):
to take a different approach tothis work that says identity is
critical, and everyone has one.
And when we talk about identity,we need to do so in a way that
recognizes that we're notplaying oppression Olympics
here. We're genuinely trying tounderstand how our positionality
our unique positionality impactswho we are, impacts how we
(29:46):
navigate systems and gives usinsight into building better
ones. This is one of the biggestproblems I see with identity
related con conversations. Itsidentity for the sake of of
ending up Higher or lower onthis oppression Olympics, you
know, poll, right? Like it's,it's absolutely the wrong way to
think about it saying like,Well, I'm a queer, trans, non
(30:10):
binary neurodivergent person ofcolor. So I check all these
marginalized boxes, right? Butunfortunately, I'm like I grew
up upper middle class. So Idon't have that marginalization.
And then maybe someone else islike, Oh, well, I have all the
same identities as you, but I'mpoor. So I'm more marginalized,
(30:31):
meaning you should listen to memore, right? And it turns into
this really weird. I mean, youknow, oppression Olympics,
right, this weird competition tosay, whose voice actually
matters. And those conversationsare toxic, they get in the way
of doing anything they makepeople who have more privileged
identities feel horrible, right.
And they get in the way ofmovement building and real
(30:53):
change. So instead, you know, weneed to move towards a place
where yes, we talk openly aboutour identities, but also our
privileged ones. We also talkabout, you know, all of the
experiences we had that were notmarginalized, but not for this
weird abstract, like, let's justshare everything about
ourselves, but specifically fora purpose. And that purpose
(31:14):
should be at least in aworkplace setting, helping to
understand how our currentworkplace impacts all of us, so
that we can understand how tobuild a better one, right? Not
identity disclosure, for its ownsake. But for the sake of making
better organizations, that needsto be the way we do it. So I'm
(31:36):
not out here, listing 20identities to seem cool. I'm
here listing my identities,because those identities
intersect in a way that gives mea really interesting experience
in a workplace, thoseidentities, let me analyze,
let's say you know how certainpolicies impact certain groups
of people, or how certainprocesses might leave certain
(31:56):
groups of people out, so that wecan design better. And if we can
move towards this newperspective of identity as a
tool for us to understand theworld around us, rather than
just a way for us to measure howgood or bad we are, which I
think is extremely unproductive,then we can make more space for
everybody to have a place inthat conversation. Right? We can
(32:19):
make it so I don't know, acisgender, heterosexual white
man can say I'm cisgender,heterosexual and white, and not
feel any sense of shame fromthat. And just say, because of
these identities, this is how Iperceive the organization. And
then someone else can say, well,that's really interesting,
because I don't see it that way.
(32:39):
As a person with very differentidentities, this is how I
perceive the organization. Andthen maybe they can say, Wow,
those are very differentexperiences. How is it that our
existing processes or policiesor culture or strategy can lend
itself to, to two differentexperiences? How do we reconcile
that? How do we do better? Howcan we design better? That's the
(33:00):
role that identity should havein these conversations.
Alex Iantaffi (33:04):
I love that it's so much more relational, right?
Because I've been at thismeeting where everybody's like,
almost like reciting theiridentity, weird. It is weird,
you know, you go around, andthen I'm like, Oh, my God, did I
remember all my identities?
Right? You know, and also, it'slike, then there isn't always
the
Unknown (33:23):
so what? Right? Yeah, what do you do with it?
Alex Iantaffi (33:27):
And there isn't always that awareness that goes
with it. Okay, so now we'velisted all our identities, but
then we never, we don't talkabout it, right? We don't
reflect on how that impacts thedynamic in the group or what's
happening. So this is so muchmore complex, but relational,
right, in some ways,
Lily Zheng (33:46):
right? And, you know, if I could go so far as to
say, I think this is the visionof why it is people started
talking about identity in thefirst place, but we didn't focus
enough on that. And over time,the act of disclosure became
everything, right, like peopleforgotten why it is we need to
(34:07):
disclose identity and just turnit into some weird game of
listing all of our identities ona on a piece of paper, right,
like, and, and stripped all thepower out of him. And if
anything, right, like, it evenbecame toxic, right? It came to
a place where like, well if youdon't share your identities, and
we judge you or if you have moreprivileged identities than we
(34:27):
judge you and it all goes backto this you know, horrible mess
of blame and shame and and, youknow, social comparison and I
don't know, right, like it's,it's not good for people. It's
not good for organizations. And,frankly, it's not effective and
the DEI spade is for helpingpeople move on and build better
and and do better.
Alex Iantaffi (34:49):
Oh, absolutely.
It's definitely not conducive tochange. In my experience. It's
almost like a confession here.
Here are all my identities andnow have been a good ally
because of you Let's settle thisthing. So right, yes, that
doesn't change anything. Well,given that this is gender
stories, let's get into gender alittle bit more. And I hope it's
(35:09):
okay to get a little bit morepersonal. And you know, I know
your pronouns, but I don't knowyour identities. But I'm curious
about are your gender impactsthe work that you do and what
kind of challenges andopportunities you've encountered
because of your gender. And ofcourse, when we talk about
gender, we can never separate itfrom all the other aspects of
our identities, right? Whetheryou know, our, our class, their
(35:34):
sexuality, how we areracialized. So when I say
gender, I also say all thoseother things that kind of are
impossible to separate in someways.
Lily Zheng (35:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
But focusing on genderprimarily, I think my answer to
this question has changed overthe years, which I guess is not
super uncommon for trans people,I am trans. But I would say
given that I transitioned reallyearly, and spent most of my
professional career as a transwomen, I think, most of my
(36:04):
experiences having my genderimpact my work was was at the
beginning of my career as atrans woman or trans feminine
person, I think, I spent a lotof time thinking about my gender
expression, and my genderpresentation and all sorts of
things from how I talked to howI related to people. Like I
(36:24):
think I spent a lot more effortto like pitch my voice. Right, I
was performing gender a lot morein that way. And I would say
that I was impacted by a lot ofthe societal expectations around
women, right? Which certainlytrans women face as well. I
think it's complicated, becauseI'm also East Asian, right. And
(36:48):
there are additionalprescriptive stereotypes about
East Asians, right, being docileor quiet or soft spoken, or
referential or whatnot. And I'msure it comes across. But
that's, that's not exactly mypersonality. I'm pretty out
there. I will say what I want tosay so early on in my career, I
(37:10):
think there were some peoplewho, given how I looked and
presented were like, Oh, I wasexpecting you to be a lot more
soft spoken. Like, you're kindof in my face. And I'm like,
Yeah, I guess I am. However, Ithink that's changed a lot in
the last few years. Namely, inthat I don't identify as a trans
woman these these days, I, youknow, I, right now, I would
(37:33):
probably identify as like a nonbinary trans femme, maybe the
terms change all the time. Andsometimes my sense of gender
changes all the time, too. Butit's been weird, because since
changing my my pronouns, andchanging how I identify, I would
say I'm treated a littledifferently than I used to be.
(37:56):
And I think it's just that noone knows how to classify me in
terms of gender, so they justdon't try. Which I feel bad for
saying, but it's kind of nice.
Like, I don't feel like I getjudged by masculine stereotypes.
And I also feel like I don't getjudged by feminine stereotypes.
So I don't know whether it'sbecause I lucked out into some
(38:18):
magic secret sweetspot of genderand race and whatnot. But um,
yeah, I don't have too manyexperiences in the last few
years, where I feel like I wasreally judged on the basis of my
gender. And I can certainlyhypothesize why Right? Like, I
think, maybe like, like, I'mstill visually Asian, right.
And, in general, there arestereotypes that say that
(38:42):
Asians, you know, are typicallynot as outspoken. So, maybe the
fact that I am outspoken, sortof makes that a novelty. And
maybe, like, breaks people'sbrains or something, right. But
Asians are also seen as nonthreatening, and me being a
agentic and confidence, which,you know, that behavior would
(39:07):
probably be seen as threatening,if it was from, let's say, you
know, like a black man, forexample, because of my
positionality, I can get awaywith being competent. And, and
sometimes I would say, a littleaggressive with with how I talk,
and not be seen as asthreatening, right? So maybe,
maybe it's some something likethat. But it's really hard to
(39:28):
sort of fit yourself in as aperson into all of these
theories about race and genderand whatnot. The simple answer I
can give is, it doesn't seemlike I am treated negatively on
the basis of my race and genderthese days. Part of that is I've
taken some personal efforts toto disambiguate myself from
(39:51):
being seen in like hypergendered ways, both in terms of
like, how I talk about myselfand how I relate to the work
that I do, but also just Likehow I've tried to position my
career, because I used to, whenI was a trans fam, and identify
this one, I used to do transinclusion trainings. And like a
(40:11):
lot of trans people who didtrans inclusion trainings, I
lead with my own story, right?
Like that was how I connectedwith people. So, you know, to
frame it very crudely, I go intoa room and cry in front of a
bunch of sis people all the timeabout my experience of gender.
And I'm lucky enough and I haveon purpose, trying to no longer
do that. Like, I hate that,like, I don't like going into a
(40:33):
room and performing my trauma.
Like now people bring me into aroom because they want the best
DEI strategist around and Ithink I'm that right? Like, I've
tried really hard to specializein a direction that doesn't
require that I perform mytrauma. And as a result, it's
not that my identity doesn'timpact my work. But I lead
primarily with my ideas and mythought leadership and the work
(40:57):
that I do, rather than, youknow, I fit all of these boxes,
and I check all of these boxesand all that, right, like I've
tried to move away from it.
Alex Iantaffi (41:06):
I love that because I think that it can be
so easy to get caught up intothat having to perform our
stories or our trauma, when wedo inclusion trainings. And I
think personally, as somebodywho also sometimes does
consultancy and training, havemoved away from that to in a
very much actually start fromasking people to think about
(41:29):
their own gender, whichsometimes sets them back a
little bit because I'm like, Oh,we thought we brought you in to
talk about that, or people thatwere there were trans.
Lily Zheng (41:37):
The Trans people are the ones who have gender, we
don't right.
Alex Iantaffi (41:41):
Now you're asking me all those questions about
gender, which maybe I've thoughtabout or not, and I'm a little
uncomfortable, but also nowwe're all there's something that
couldn't access as well, rightnow, it's not this other reading
experience. And so yeah, therewas, as you were talking, I was
resonating with some of thethings you were saying which and
(42:02):
I feel like I could go onforever and in this
conversation, but I want to berespectful of your time. So is
there anything that we haven'ttalked about that you would
really like to share with thegender stories, listeners, about
either your book or dei work ingeneral, or really anything that
you want to share with thelisteners?
Lily Zheng (42:22):
Oh, man, but there's so much. I really liked what you
had to say earlier about askingpeople their personal
relationship to gender, in a lotof ways that actually mirrors
some approaches that I take withhelping, let's say, men, or you
know, folks with otherprivileged identities, grapple
(42:43):
with those identities in theworkplace. And I frequently will
lead a conversation thatessentially says men like, I'd
love if you could teach us aboutgender. And they often pause,
like, you know, they werenominated for something, they
have no expertise. And they'rejust like, Well, my wife knows a
(43:04):
lot about gender. I don't knowanything about gender, right? I
remember I was talking to anexecutive who says, Well, I
thought I knew a lot about theworkplace. For example, I don't
know anything about gender. ButI know a lot about the workplace
and how promotions work. But mywife has been telling me about
her experience of gender, andhow maybe the workplace isn't
(43:25):
what I thought it was given thather experiences are so different
from mine. And I push backagainst this person, and I said,
Look, your wife understandsgender and knows how to work how
the workplace functions forpeople of her gender. And you
also understand gender, youknow, how the workplace
functions for people of yourgender. And this is something
(43:48):
difficult, it's that, you know,I mentioned this about privilege
earlier, it's a it's a doublebladed sword, right? Like, you
don't think too often about howyour privilege is itself. A
unique experience, right, likemasculinity is a unique
experience, and being able tounpack exactly how you being a
man, are you being white, or youbeing upper class? Are you being
(44:12):
non disabled, or cisgender, or,or heterosexual? How all that
affected your experience, not inany good or bad way, just how it
you know, impacted yourexperience is enormously
powerful, because it gives youinsight into the world around
you. I tell everyone, everyone'sown experiences your own
(44:34):
positionality gives you avaluable but incomplete insight
into the world. valuable butincomplete, right? Everyone is
valuable. Everyone's experiencesare valuable, but no one's
experiences are perfectlyrepresentative of everything.
This is why we need to betalking together not to you
(44:55):
know, determine who's worthy ornot or who's a good person or a
bad person. But so we can puttogether all of these disparate
pieces of the puzzle and get aclearer understanding of the
world around us. Right, itreminds me of this teaching
concept called Jigsaw learning,where you give a roomful of
students different parts of theproblem, and different
(45:16):
information they need, and say,figure it out. And students will
start by themselves and say,there's something wrong here, I
can't figure it out. Right. Andthat's by design, it forces them
to come together and share ideasand share information, and put
all of these parts together sothat they can figure out the
problem, I would say gender, andidentity in general, is exactly
(45:40):
the same, right? You need tohave everyone coming together
with their experiences so thatyou can accurately understand
the state of the organization orthe state of the department or
the team or the world even,right. So you can work together
and problem solve. And I likethinking about it in this way.
Because it gives peopleespecially people with
privileged identities are reallyvaluable place in this work. It
(46:03):
doesn't center them. In fact, itdoesn't center anyone. Right? It
says simply, we need everyonehere to be able to do this work
effectively.
Alex Iantaffi (46:13):
Yeah, I love that. Well, any centers, the
work, the outcome, right, theoutcome is equity. Its
inclusion, like, and I lovethat. I feel like I could say so
much more, but I'm gonna take adeep breath and control my
desire to have this conversationfor the next three hours. And
instead, I'm gonna ask you, ifpeople want to find your book,
(46:37):
or more about your work, or evenwant to book you for training,
like how can they get in touchwith you where they can find out
more about the wonderful workthat you do?
Lily Zheng (46:47):
Yeah, well, you can find me on my website at
lilyzheng.com. And we canprobably put that information in
the summary. And you can followmy work most easily on LinkedIn.
Just search me Lily Zheng. Andyeah, there's a lot there. I
post multiple times a week, Iput everything I do up on
(47:07):
LinkedIn. So those are your besttwo places to learn more about
me and engage with my content.
And I love getting messages andDMS from folks, so please reach
out.
Alex Iantaffi (47:17):
That's wonderful.
Well, thank you so much, Lily,for coming to gender stories
today. I really appreciateeverything you've shared. And
maybe we'll just have to have apart two for all the other
pieces of the conversation. Wethen get to today.
Lily Zheng (47:30):
Perhaps perhaps, yeah, maybe you so much for
having me
Alex Iantaffi (47:34):
when the next book is out. Well, thank you so
much for coming today. Thanks.
And dear listeners as ever,thank you for supporting gender
stories. And if you've enjoyedthis episode, please share away
and by Lily's Book DEIdeconstructed and check out
their work. Thank you so much.
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