Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, there's
Speaker 1: some good news and some bad news when it comes
Speaker 1: to the corporate diversity front. The number of SMP five
Speaker 1: hundred seats held by black women actually increase more than
Speaker 1: one that's according to I s S Corporate Solutions, it's
Speaker 1: a data and analytics provider that advises companies on corporate
Speaker 1: governance and more. The increase for black women is twice
Speaker 1: the rate for women overall. Still, though black women hold
Speaker 1: only four percent of SMP five hundred board seat the
Speaker 1: data show, and according to Bloomberg Data, women overall makeup
Speaker 1: just over thirty percent of board seats for companies in
Speaker 1: the SMP five hundred, So a long way to go
Speaker 1: to come to parody. Ruchika Toolshan is CEO of Candor.
Speaker 1: It's a consulting firm that works with organizations on diversity
Speaker 1: and inclusion. She's also the author of Inclusion on Purpose,
Speaker 1: an intersectional approach to creating a culture of belonging at work. Richka,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm welcome. Thanks so much Tim for
Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, it's really great to have you. I
Speaker 1: just want to start with the title of the book
Speaker 1: and explain to get you to explain intersectionality for for
Speaker 1: people who aren't familiar with the term. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much so. Intersectionality is a is a concept developed
Speaker 1: by Professor can Really Crenshaw. Actually it's as old as
Speaker 1: ninety nine, where where Professor Creunchaw essentially found that the
Speaker 1: experience of black women and other women of color was
Speaker 1: actually compounded negatively, not only just because they were women,
Speaker 1: but because they were black women or women of color.
Speaker 1: And I think that approach as we think about creating
Speaker 1: true inclusion, um, you know, workplace where people with various
Speaker 1: marginalized identities can belong, we cannot separate out how those
Speaker 1: identities when they intersect, how they compound and affect the
Speaker 1: experience of women of color in the workplace. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that the term dated back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties because it's not one that I actually became
Speaker 1: familiar with until just a few years ago. And it
Speaker 1: is one that I hear though in discussions more and
Speaker 1: more when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Why did
Speaker 1: it take so long for intersectionality to become something that
Speaker 1: more and more people are talking about. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a bit tricky, and one of good reasons is
Speaker 1: because I think until quite recently, a lot of our
Speaker 1: corporate environment was not ready to tackle the issues of racism, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, head on. And really spurred on by some
Speaker 1: of the huge movements for racial justice you've seen here
Speaker 1: in the United States and around the world, I think
Speaker 1: they're there really became a sort of awareness, and I'm
Speaker 1: so glad that Professor Crenshaw's work is getting this sort of, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the highlighting that it deserves because it's so
Speaker 1: necessary to take an intersectional approach. I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the work that you do at
Speaker 1: Candor and how it's changed of late. Um, what are
Speaker 1: you hearing from clients right now in terms of what
Speaker 1: they how they want to approach diversity in their organizations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great question, Tim, And it's actually kind of alluding to
Speaker 1: what I talked to about earlier. So when I started
Speaker 1: tender in UM, you know, earlier in in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: what I found is a lot of organizations at that
Speaker 1: time my clients wanted to talk about diversity, but really
Speaker 1: only gender diversity, and what that meant is, how are
Speaker 1: you know, well educated, high socio economic UM white women
Speaker 1: progressing in the workplace. And now I see this, this real,
Speaker 1: honest change to want to be more intersectional, to UM
Speaker 1: center race and anti racism in in true diversity and
Speaker 1: equity inclusions efforts, and that to me is really meaningful
Speaker 1: because it's hard, it's painful. Many of us have grown
Speaker 1: up UM and been taught not to talk about these
Speaker 1: issues in the workplace. But without addressing them, we can't
Speaker 1: make meaningful change. You know. I like to ask this
Speaker 1: question to two people who do work that's similar to yours,
Speaker 1: about working to put yourself out of business? You know,
Speaker 1: the actual need you know, it's it's it's a testament
Speaker 1: to what our world is that you actually that that
Speaker 1: your job is needed. Right, there's so much work to do,
Speaker 1: so so within our lifetimes, Uh, will that work be done?
Speaker 1: You know? Can? I really hope so? And there's a
Speaker 1: part of me that remains optimistic. At least we're having
Speaker 1: these conversations, I see more leaders wanting to make change.
Speaker 1: The reason I wrote Inclusion on purposes because I really
Speaker 1: wanted leaders to have a playbook something like say could
Speaker 1: turn to and say, you know, I want to make change,
Speaker 1: Where do I start? What could I do? And so
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe that we we have the tools
Speaker 1: we need to succeed. We just need to be really
Speaker 1: intentional about it and really take personal action and responsibility
Speaker 1: for it. So where do people start? Well, good question, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it really starts with taking personal responsibility when
Speaker 1: you start developing the awareness of what's really going on UM.
Speaker 1: And that is one of the reasons why I have worked.
Speaker 1: You know, I I'm a former journalist, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the work that I've done in in trying to
Speaker 1: communicate these issues of bias, the anti race, of creating
Speaker 1: an anti racist culture, of creating an equitable and inclusive culture,
Speaker 1: has been from starting from stories. We do have the data,
Speaker 1: and there's good data out there to show the dis
Speaker 1: veri these that exist. Some research finds. For example, you
Speaker 1: know you talked about the SMP west of the inclations UM,
Speaker 1: A lot of the C suite currently the games made
Speaker 1: for women have been actually white women and the women
Speaker 1: of color are less than four pertent of the C
Speaker 1: suite representation in corporate America today. So we know that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of work to be done. Um where
Speaker 1: I find that that where we are able to read
Speaker 1: make changes when we listen to those stories, when we
Speaker 1: learned to emphasize with those stories, really try and seek
Speaker 1: them out. What does it look like, what does it
Speaker 1: feel like? What does it really look like to have
Speaker 1: an inclusive environment and practice? And that requires laying down
Speaker 1: our defenses, getting really really okay with getting uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: then moving to make change. So that's really where I
Speaker 1: would start. We know that diverse teams perform better and
Speaker 1: create better results. What do you say to people to
Speaker 1: motivate them to to really put down down those defenses,
Speaker 1: because I think that can be challenging even for some
Speaker 1: of the best leaders out there. You know, the data
Speaker 1: that doesn't yet talked about nearly enough is that yes,
Speaker 1: diverse teams, when harnessed properly, really do outperform more homogeneous teams.
Speaker 1: But the reality is this work is hard, It creates conflict.
Speaker 1: If you really want an inclusive team, it can be uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: especially for a lot of people who have never worked
Speaker 1: with or meaningfully interactive with people who are different than them.
Speaker 1: But the reality is it also makes you as an individual.
Speaker 1: It makes you smarter, it makes you better prepared, it
Speaker 1: makes you more productive. I mean, there is a good
Speaker 1: amount of data out there, but at the end of it,
Speaker 1: at the very core of it, it's the right things
Speaker 1: to do right. It is the right and and I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of the early part of the work
Speaker 1: convincing folks around the data and that it's good for you,
Speaker 1: it's good for business, it's all of that. At the
Speaker 1: end of day, it's the right thing to do. Inclusion
Speaker 1: on purpose and intersectional approach to creating a culture of
Speaker 1: belonging at work. Ruchika tool Shan also the CEO of Canada.
Speaker 1: Ruchika thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: business Week Radio