Interview with Kristen Knepper: Founder & CEO of Kristen Knepper Consulting. Kristen Knepper Consulting is a dual professional development firm specializing in diversity & inclusion and career coaching for women. Kristen facilitates workshops on inclusive leadership, emotional intelligence, team synergy, and subconscious bias. (kristenknepper.com)
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia, and today I am sitting down with Kristen Knepper. Kristen is the founder and CEO of Kristen Knepper Consulting. You can locate her at Kristen Knepper Dotcom. That is Cristie and K and E p e r dot com. Welcome, Kristen. [00:01:48][18.6]
[00:01:49] Thank you. I'm excited to be here. [00:01:50][1.1]
[00:01:50] I'm excited to have you. I look forward to getting into your company. And for everyone listening, I'm going to do a quick file on Kristen. But before we do that, the roadmap of today's podcast will be similar to the roadmap that we've done for the entire series. We're going to talk about Kristen's academic background and early professional life. Then we will go straight to unpacking Kristen Knepper consulting, and we're going to hit the big pillars there. So the when, where, who, what, why? So everything regarding founding and funding and all of that good stuff. And then we'll turn our attention straight to the goals that Kristen has for both Kristen Knepper consulting and maybe even some personal goals for the next three years regarding scaling expansion, branding, all of those things. And then we will wrap everything up with talking about advice that Kristen has for those who are either looking to work with her alongside her or model some of their career after what she has done. We drop into a quick bio. [00:02:43][52.4]
[00:02:43] And Kristen, before I start peppering her with questions, Kristen Nupur is the founder and CEO of Kristen No Consulting, a dual professional development firm specializing in diversity and inclusion and career coaching for women who facilitates workshops on inclusive leadership, emotional intelligence team synergy and subconscious bias. Kristen served both Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Senator Debbie Stabenow advising on a variety of policy issues while perfecting her negotiation and mediation skills as founder of Christian Network Consulting. Her mission is to help organizations retain and engage the talent of the modern workforce while assisting individuals in articulating their value. She speaks in a variety of topics surrounding women in business, including self advocacy, empowerment, feminine leadership and intersectionality. I am so excited to get into some of this with you, Kristen. I think that your firm, it sounds like the ethos of it is something that we so desperately need. But before we get into that, can you drop a straight into your academic background and early professional life following that? [00:03:47][64.4]
[00:03:48] Yeah, absolutely. So and I like to share the story just to tell other people, don't be afraid to take a chance and really listen to your inner gut. So I was six years old. [00:03:58][10.0]
[00:03:58] I saw Marilyn Monroe on TV. I decided I wanted to be an actress and my parents being the overachiever people they were. [00:04:04][5.7]
[00:04:05] And they said, well, you can either go to Juilliard or Western. And Northwestern was closer to where I was growing up. So I went to Northwestern, studied theater, and I hated it. And while I was there, I became involved into political campaigns and I'm dating myself, but it was ninety two. So it was Senator Carol Moseley Braun who then became the first African-American elected to the US Senate, African-American woman elected to the US Senate, and then Bill Clinton and Al Gore. And that really set me on a path. I left college at that time, decided to take a leave of absence, moved to D.C. with, able to apply for and obtain an internship with Senator Kennedy. [00:04:41][36.1]
[00:04:42] And I changed direction and did it. It wasn't really a whim, but it was it was really a risk. And I'm so glad I did, because that set me up that way as I transfer to school in D.C. And then that was my first job after college, working for the senator. And I stayed there through my first year of law school, got to work on a number of policy issues and just really observe leaders in the field, people who were really excellent at their craft. And that set a very high bar for me as I went through. [00:05:11][29.4]
[00:05:12] Did you find it difficult to get I mean, it sounds like a prestigious internship and I just never know how difficult it is working in D.C. like a Kennedy internship. Your first round in was that rough or was it difficult to get or was it connected? How did you get there? [00:05:25][13.5]
[00:05:26] Yeah, I think that's a great question and so might just tell you. So I grew up on a farm in Indiana, so I did not have connections in that regard. And I was just too young and stupid, for lack of a better word, to know that that was supposed to be super prestigious and it wasn't something that I was supposed to get. So I just submitted my application and I had a roommate. I didn't even know how to do a resume, really at the time I was 19 years old and he saw me, saw what I was doing, and I said, I'm going to move to D.C. and I'm going to do this. I'm so excited. And she's like, well, don't do it that way. And he helped me. And so it was being open to not knowing anything and allowing myself to be put in the hands of people that were really helpful, had my best interest at heart. [00:06:15][48.7]
[00:06:15] And following that gut instinct and how you said that you you had pivoted very quickly from realizing you didn't like the theater program and that you get swept up in two campaigns, but do you remember how you became swept up in. The two campaigns was based on college politics on campus or how did that happen? [00:06:31][16.2]
[00:06:32] No, it was my sister was really influential in that and she was already in D.C. She was actually younger than me. And she had applied to be a page on Capitol Hill when she was a junior in high school and seeing what she did and her enthusiasm. And I think, again, that young and naive in some ways, but very, very hopeful idea of this can be an instrument that can really change the world. And it was a time. So this was the Anita Hill hearings in my first year of college and seeing what she went through and just knowing in my gut that you don't take risks like that when you're an established professor, law professor would throw your entire career away to condemn somebody that she must honestly be telling the truth and to see so many people not believe her. That really fired me up. And obviously a lot of other women in nineteen ninety two that was known as the or the woman. And we tripled the number of women senators. Of course it went from two to six at that time, but it was really that movement and seeing someone else's struggle, I think that really motivated me. [00:07:40][67.8]
[00:07:41] Yeah, absolutely. Well and I think that, you know, things come around. I'm a big believer in that. And being in my 40s, I can attest to the fact that I'm finally living to a place where even politically I'm seeing happen, because the Anita Hill issue is very big. When you're considering the Democratic candidate of Joe Biden and how he treated her in those hearings, those things don't go away. And I will never forget how I felt watching how she was treated within those hearings and how she was to be proven right rather than understood or heard. She had to validate even kind of being able to say what she said or being a woman. It was it was amazing for feminist history to see that go down on a very political scale. [00:08:26][45.8]
[00:08:27] Absolutely. Yeah. I remember that very distinctly myself. And I remember thinking at the time, this woman has a law degree. Why are you not giving her credit for her education and everything she's struggled to achieve? And it was just so anxious and I felt so defeated after that and that something needed to be done. [00:08:42][15.2]
[00:08:43] Yeah, I agree. And I think that contributing to our stories and even putting it out there works with that. I mean, we had Brett Kavanaugh kind of reintroduced the entire thing just yet once again. So history is going to keep doing this until we can start to change. And I think getting women in office is the fastest way for that change. And have we started that work in the 90s, the year of the woman? [00:09:02][19.4]
[00:09:04] Awesome. That's great. Let's have another one, maybe double down. But I do I do love the idea that we had the the gusto. [00:09:12][7.6]
[00:09:13] And I was like, oh, look, we've got six new six senators that are women and it's darling when people say that. But I believe in change. And if it's slow, I'll take it that way, too. But I'd like to speed it up. And that's a fantastic I think that setting up in Washington, I'm always curious with people who get that kind of breath, because it seems to be like a microcosm climate. It's like it's oh, yeah, it's its own little universe. It's like it's a little country. [00:09:36][23.1]
[00:09:36] I went to D.C. for the first time when I was 19 on separate business. And I remember thinking they have different like Hollywood here, like different people, Amus. [00:09:45][8.2]
[00:09:45] They have different ugly people, we call it. [00:09:47][1.9]
[00:09:48] Yeah, it's crazy. It's cool because I love it when you get into an environment and you don't have to leave our country where the importance of things shifts. It's who's working for who, it's who's got what agenda. It's it's a very different dynamic than you get in other parts of the country who have their own agenda. [00:10:06][17.4]
[00:10:06] Absolutely. I remember traveling to Austin when I was still on the Hill and still in DC and we were at a wine bar and I was with someone and the waitress came over and she started chatting with us and was very friendly and was telling us about things to do and everything. [00:10:20][14.0]
[00:10:21] And she walked away and I turned to my companion and I said, what's her problem? And he looked at me and he's like Kristen. [00:10:26][5.4]
[00:10:27] Outside of the district, people are nice to each other, mind blown. I was like, Oh, people are. Plomley OK. [00:10:34][7.2]
[00:10:35] Yeah, right. I know that people say that in New York is rough. And I was like, oh, I've had some pretty scathing comments in D.C. People can get pretty intense. Very. Which is good. It's good to have that kind of passion behind it. So I want to turn now. [00:10:51][16.6]
[00:10:52] We can kind of double back into some of your I think we will kind of drop back in as we're climbing through it. But back into your affair with Washington, DC. But I want to look at unpacking Kristen Knepper consulting. And I want to start with when it was founded. So a year who founded it? And in addition to you, are you alone and funding? So those three things, did you bootstrap, did you get funding and when was it founded? [00:11:16][23.8]
[00:11:16] Yeah, great question. So this is another kind of pivot that I made. So when the business was initially founded, it was founded with three gentlemen. [00:11:25][8.4]
[00:11:25] It was a consulting at the. Time, and we did that in 2014 and then parted ways in early 2016, and that's when, you know, I had some pivotal things going on, I knew I still wanted to be an entrepreneur, entrepreneur and a business owner. I had always been passionate about feminism, and I knew that there was something more that needed to be to be done and that the gifts I had to give and I was having a conversation with my friend Luke, and he had gone to a personal development workshop and he came back from Denver. And I said to him, what was your aha moment? What was one of the pivotal things you learned? And he's a very thoughtful person. So he paused for a second and he looked at me and he said, men think they're great and women think they're unworthy. And he could have told me that the sun rose in the east. I was like, we all know that. [00:12:11][45.7]
[00:12:11] Yes, great. Great. But he looked at me again. He was like, why is that? And rather than giving a flippant response, I you know, I thought about it and I was like, I don't know. But I sure want to find out. And that was when I committed to going in this direction of working with women, not exclusively but fundamentally making that my focus. [00:12:33][22.2]
[00:12:34] And as I started to unpack what that would look like, one of the things that we always do with regard to teaching women how to make it in the workforce is we put all the responsibility on them. And the reality is at the top, you have white men who are not changing and don't understand the power of a diverse team and how that will change the dynamics of your business for the better 10 times over. [00:13:01][26.3]
[00:13:01] And so I realized that it had to be a dual consulting agency where we were teaching those who already had power while also working directly with women. [00:13:11][9.7]
[00:13:12] Did you bootstrap when you shifted over to just. [00:13:14][1.9]
[00:13:15] Oh, did I? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [00:13:18][3.2]
[00:13:19] OK, and then twenty sixteen. You went off on your own and did you bring anyone else on underneath you or were you a single person team for a sec. [00:13:26][7.7]
[00:13:27] Single person team. [00:13:28][0.8]
[00:13:29] Well it's interesting because you started off with like a perception, like an idea of what you wanted to incorporate into it. And I love that. But it also seems very obtuse, you know, thinking about I want to take this inclusive city and liked and change and understand this kind of status quo of like, women just don't feel the same as men in business. [00:13:49][20.1]
[00:13:49] It seems wonderful, but it also seems very obscure to kind of make it part of your business model and thread that through. Did you do that best with obtaining your new clients, like looking to work with women, or did you start off with like a structured set of tools that guided your ethos? [00:14:06][16.4]
[00:14:08] That's a great question. So it was it grew very organically, but it was asking it was kind of the same way I landed in Washington, D.C. and got a prestigious internship. It was asking questions. It was not knowing enough to be guarded. And I would say something and some would say, no, absolutely don't do that. But we do it, you know, and and having just some guidance early on from people who had gone before me, both in the consulting industry and in the diversity and inclusion industry as well. And in previous jobs, I had always I had led the internship program for Senator Kennedy. I had always managed teams. And then I was working with law students. And to career counseling was something that I had always done. And one of the interesting things that kind of guided the way I did this, so I had been divorced and after I was divorced, you know, you really kind of unpack what was my part in this. And so I took a number of dating classes and that was really fundamental. There was a woman I worked with. Her name is Dr. Pat Allen, and she talks about femininity and masculinity. And I think that that's something that we don't really talk about a lot, especially in the workplace. But I took those elements and I studied how those would impact a workplace and how much more power and prestige we give to masculine traits than we do to feminine traits. But that having a balance of both, just like in any relationship, is really what makes a team dynamic and move forward, is having that diversity of thought, diversity of perspective. [00:15:38][89.8]
[00:15:39] And rather than teaching women to be more masculine and to fit into this mold, we really need to teach them what. And not every women, obviously not every single woman conforms to this, but teaching the other side of that coin and the value of femininity and what that can contribute to the workplace. [00:15:55][15.8]
[00:15:56] Yeah, absolutely. And just, I think removing or trying to reassign the power of the values that we're calling masculine and feminine. You know, I think everything has a value in the place. But to ascribe a higher power to traits that are traditionally seen as masculine is where we get into the algebraic breakdown of why the unevenness of of power exists and why men don't feel as excited about adopting feminine traits which are incredibly healthy. [00:16:29][33.4]
[00:16:30] There is someone who did a recent study regarding what is considered a feminine trait, and there's a lot of them that are much more attuned to things that we're trying to implement back into the workforce, meditative and calm and things of those nature. And I don't I don't ascribe to anything being masculine or feminine anymore. I try very hard to reprogram myself in that direction. But I don't mind having looked at things that way or having people look things that way in the past, so long as we can move forward with a new value assigned to them. [00:16:58][27.9]
[00:16:59] Yeah, I think we have to kind of backtrack and understand that history before we can move forward and make it. [00:17:03][4.6]
[00:17:04] Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. So I'm curious with your firm, since twenty sixteen, as you've acquired clients and kind of implemented this, this ethos of diversity and inclusion, you it says that you have you in your bio, it talks about running different workshops and leadership kind of things, talking about emotional intelligence and team synergy. Did all of those products, let's call them for lack of a better are techniques that you kind of implement with companies. Did those develop organically and do they change depending on your particular company's need or have you found this boilerplate that everybody simply needs? [00:17:45][41.0]
[00:17:45] Yeah, that's a great question. So it was trial and error at first that I really established what was necessary. And when we talk about diversity, inclusion, being trained as an attorney, I think in a very linear fashion. And I think about, oh, these are the statistics and this is what we need to do, and that doesn't change hearts and minds. [00:18:02][16.5]
[00:18:03] So having the emotional intelligence component that I was, one of the things that I drew on early on, I don't even remember how that that came into play. I think I was probably giving a lecture and somebody said, that's really interesting, but you're not really facilitating a conversation with other people when you just throw statistics at them that doesn't change their minds. [00:18:23][20.8]
[00:18:24] So implemented this format that I start off every workshop, emotional intelligence. So talking about self awareness, self regulation and empathy, because change always starts with the individual. So if I have a CEO that doesn't understand that he or she is becoming defensive and we're talking about something that triggers him or her, you know, nothing's going to change. It has to be top down. So I make every individual accountable in that way. And then once we go through that section of the training, then we can start talking about statistics. [00:18:55][30.8]
[00:18:55] Then we can start talking about what the reality is for different marginalized communities and how we want it to look instead. Right. [00:19:03][8.1]
[00:19:04] It's tricky. I mean, I think it's it when I. Here, things like that, I think this is great, but how it's delivered and received, like you said, the defensiveness you first prepare someone to not receive something in a defensive manner is crucial and key. And when you get someone who may have been unknowingly kind of guilty or belonging to a system that was unknowingly guilty of discrimination, everybody gets very shifty every moment. [00:19:32][27.8]
[00:19:34] So it's important that we talk about that up front. And that's one of the things that I've learned over the years, that we have to start up with a conversation about emotional intelligence. We have to understand that all of us are guilty of behavior that was less desirable than our highest self would want and that there's nothing good or bad from that. [00:19:53][19.0]
[00:19:53] We take that, we learn from it. We move forward and we make another choice instead. [00:19:58][4.3]
[00:19:59] I think, you know, the worst pieces of my job is when I start to leave an event or I start to leave a training and I have somebody say, and this is thankfully not going would only happen to a couple of times, but have somebody say, well, I just don't really see color and I have to go back and say, well, that means that it doesn't matter to you. I see them. Exactly. Or I had one time this gentleman who is from Australia. So I hope that that plays a part in it. But he we were talking he's like, well, I don't really pay attention to gender. I just hire the best man for the job. Yes. [00:20:35][35.3]
[00:20:35] Yes. Put that on a t shirt. That's gorgeous. I love that. So I'm glad he was he was brave enough to just put that out there. [00:20:44][9.2]
[00:20:45] Like that subconscious slip is so vitally important because I think that people love to love themselves. Men love to love themselves. And I think that that is if I could bottle something and drink it and pass it around my sister had, I would that like self love. It goes into anti bigotry that there is no I'm not discriminatory. I'm just better than everyone else. It's just beautiful because it's so ironic and weird. But I think great things come from really believing in this childish way that you are queen and you can do anything and all that. Like I love that idea. [00:21:21][36.4]
[00:21:21] It's just the way you understand how preposterously they they certain people just don't have that logic mindset. When you hear things like like, oh, you're not home at all. [00:21:31][9.7]
[00:21:34] Yeah. The competence of a mediocre white guy. [00:21:36][1.9]
[00:21:38] Bottle it, sell it on your unicorn on the way. [00:21:42][3.9]
[00:21:44] I agree. [00:21:44][0.2]
[00:21:45] So when you know, as you've had a couple, you're in deep you're in three years, you're heading into your fourth year of Christian Knepper Consulting. What has been can you draw like looking back, it's not a ton of time, but it's enough to look at the road and how it's changed and what you've done. Can you draw us through some of the changes that's happened with it? [00:22:03][18.6]
[00:22:04] Yeah, so I had a big breakthrough. So I had a friend who was a writer at Universal Studios and introduced me to some of the diversity and inclusion team there in the summer of twenty seventeen. And then lo and behold, in October of two thousand and seventeen, we know what happened. And the Harvey Weinstein story broke and I was in high demand at that time. And it was one of those things where I'm like, oh my God, I'm going. I need to hire more people. I'm gonna need to expand. I'm going to need to make this look different. We're going to need to do a train, the trainer workshop, et cetera, et cetera. And as soon as that started to build momentum, it just as quickly died. And everybody remembers the Tony Robbins video that went out and how he had been speaking to people in Hollywood and they were scared to hire women or be alone with women or talk to women or promote women. I really felt that shift in my business in a very visceral way. [00:22:54][50.6]
[00:22:56] And so I guess that taught me that you just have to to to ride the horse. [00:23:00][4.5]
[00:23:01] You're given to throw a cliche out there because it's slowly starting to come back. [00:23:06][5.4]
[00:23:07] And I think that that is what makes having a dual income consultancy really sustainable, because when that source of income went away, it had to be the the women's leadership workshops. It had to be the group coaching and had to be the individual coaching that sustained me over that period of time. So just making sure that your audiences is more than one sector of the population can be really, really valuable in that regard. [00:23:33][26.2]
[00:23:34] Absolutely. And being able to ride those waves, I mean, the irony of what you're talking about, I think hasn't been fully explored. I think a lot of people kind of bump into it by saying, oh, yeah, after it affected them. But this backlash after me to really took off and things like that of people being scared and on a whole nother level. [00:23:53][19.1]
[00:23:55] First it was discrimination and then it was fear of bringing women on to retaining women that were already in businesses for fear of lawsuits that were just gaining traction and, you know, dismantling financial. [00:24:07][12.2]
[00:24:07] Actually, companies and things like that, I there was a massive back wave that Tony Robbins indeed explored on a superficial level, but it affected a lot of people and yourself being a consulting person, even people in house that had contracts that were coming up or things like that, I knew of a lot of people that believed that their job was on the line, even though they women and women identified individuals simply because they just became the communities, especially those that knew things were a little dicey and weren't sure how quickly they could fix their issues were terrified. [00:24:42][34.5]
[00:24:43] You know, everyone started looking inward. And it's ironic that the I mean, it's not ironic. It happens. This is history. But as we victimize the victim and to go back in and do that is it is tragic. So it is interesting that your company did that and that you pivoted with it. And they always say the true test of of the boxer is the fight, not the reception of the champagne afterwards. So this was indeed one of your fights. But it is interesting. I also I had this like it's funny as I think about what you do and dealing with diversity and inclusion. I always picture your clients being diverse and like inclusion. I like women, people of color, but it seems like your work would be best had with those that didn't have those elements. I had it backwards. I had it flipped in my head. Do you find that to be true with your history? [00:25:31][48.7]
[00:25:32] Yeah. So it's interesting because some are ready to have this conversation and it's well received and some people get very, very defensive. So if I'm in a room full of the sea level suite, it's usually going to be white men and me. And there's one or two women. And a lot of times those women will identify with the more masculine parts of themselves. [00:25:52][19.7]
[00:25:52] And they'll have this attitude of, well, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and I don't see why everybody else can't do it that way as well. And so you're really having to Ginger Rogers, the situation, do it all backwards and in heels, making sure that they are comfortable and and don't become triggered, as you are introducing very slowly in these baby spoonfuls, this idea that maybe what we're doing isn't really working, because this is the survey that we took and this is what the people at your company said. And you called me in here for a reason. So it's a very, very fine dance. [00:26:28][35.7]
[00:26:29] Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think the best way to show anyone that they should talk with you is to either have no money attached, altruistic efforts like this podcast series, or to have their bottom line impacted. [00:26:44][15.1]
[00:26:45] Are you able to go in and show statistics because it's a tragedy? Is is that that's still the fastest way to move any company? Right. Is to be like this is going to affect your bottom line. [00:26:54][8.6]
[00:26:54] Yeah, and it does. It affects everybody's bottom line, whether they know it or not. Because if women don't feel as though they have a chance to be promoted, to be appreciated and to reach their full potential, they're going to go elsewhere. [00:27:05][10.5]
[00:27:05] And that's going to cost you as far as hiring, recruiting, retention at any company on the planet. So it's one of those things. And not just women, obviously, any marginalized community. So it's really important to be having these conversations and to paying attention to this because we live in a global economy at this time whether we want to or not. And the country is becoming more diverse. [00:27:24][18.9]
[00:27:25] Yeah. Do you do you describe value to there's a lot of organizations that have popped up that you can apply to to show that you belong to their margins and and statistical requirements for diversity and inclusion. You know, there's people seeking specific labels from companies that it's like you apply, you go through this process, you prove that you belong to it, and then you can use that as a badge. Do you think that that's a good way to go for people to start being able to? Because I know that there is equally as much people and as many people looking to employ companies that have those those values involved in them, and not just the verbiage on the landing page of like, yeah, we're totally about diversity, but people who actually have proven metrics. [00:28:07][41.8]
[00:28:08] Yeah. I think, you know, and I'm hesitating because it depends on the metrics and they can vary and you might be able to show something in writing that you're not doing in reality. And so that's my hesitancy that I think it's very well-meaning. I would just be cautious about what's going on behind the curtain. Absolutely. [00:28:30][21.9]
[00:28:31] So with your the kind of changing growth that you've had with Christian Knepper consulting, do you think that because it seems like you're I don't know. I can't tell if you've diversified. I don't know if you're transitioning to be more it sounds like you have like this workshop base, but then you have you have a serious work like a girl and of online courses like when did that come above about? [00:28:55][23.6]
[00:28:55] And was that part of an evolution that came out of your workshops? [00:28:57][2.1]
[00:28:58] That was so that was early on as I was bootstrapping things and thinking of different streams of income that I started the the workshop series and just getting more people. [00:29:07][8.3]
[00:29:07] To pay attention to my work and understand the need for it and to subscribe to it so it would do a series of weekly videos and I did a couple of classes, including a sexual harassment class, before the whole Harvey Weinstein thing broke, going over the legal and what you can do when it's microaggression and it might be something that is impacting your work, but it's just not quite there where it's going to be actionable in a court of law. And let's face it, we don't want to we don't want that to be the channel that we have to go down. We would like this taken care of long before that becomes a necessity. So it was that model. I really like doing things in person more so I can put a less than premium price. If there are women that want to work with me and they don't have the means to do so by having the online courses. But I really like being able to facilitate these conversations and making sure that people understand the impact that this work can have. And it's interesting because a lot of times people will say, well, what are the results when you go into the company? And, you know, it's like hiring a personal trainer. That really depends on you. You can take this routine and you can go to the gym every day and you can see fantastic results, or you can do it once and say, well, that was fun and never do it again. And you're not going to see that change in your life. So it just depends on the motivation that the industry really has. Mhm. [00:30:21][73.5]
[00:30:21] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean the fluidity of the course laid out, I feel like a lot of people who advocate for change and want change, particularly younger people, there's, there's a lack of like a roadmap, there's a lack of like let's do this first, then that first grassroots here. And the same is true with business. It sounds like you're coming in and actually providing like a really solid boilerplate that people can follow and kind of investigate and learn. I don't think I think the fear around exclusivity and examining these things, there's a lot of energy around. Oh, it's so nerve racking. But when you can actually get into it and do it, it's it's built to make life easier. It's built so that everyone can breathe. And I think that people reminding themselves of that, you know, at the end of all of this, we're all going to feel a lot better. [00:31:11][50.0]
[00:31:12] And that's usually when we start off these workshops, one of the things that I do is I ask people, you know, was there a time where you felt like you couldn't bring your authentic self to work? And what was that like? Or can you name three childhood memories? And and what if you couldn't talk about this one? So and I remember in one workshop, it was somebody who was a fan of San Diego Padres and he said, oh, I used to go to all these games with my dad and I really loved it and et cetera, et cetera. And then it was crossed off his list. And I said, well, what does that mean to you? If you couldn't talk about that at work? And he's like, those are all the memories I have of my father. That was my childhood. It gave me this depth in this meaning. So even something that may seem superficial can really hit people in a way where they understand and they can have empathy for others who are being marginalized, who can't really fully talk about what they are, you know, it is happening to them and really uncover a layer that otherwise they wouldn't be able to. [00:32:09][57.3]
[00:32:10] Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's and it's that that examination I mean, that individual being helped beyond just the workforce. Like I said, you know, when when the efforts are going to help one system, it's going to help all systems. [00:32:21][11.2]
[00:32:22] Yeah. There's no personal and professional anymore. It's all there. Yeah. [00:32:27][5.1]
[00:32:28] I truly believe that that was hosted or aided incredibly by the removal of the office environment by virtual workplaces. It just the melding was was sort of happening this ridiculous Mad Men divide of work and home that never really existed anyway. It just led to like alcoholism and depression. [00:32:47][19.1]
[00:32:47] But I mean, trying to sever an individual like that and be like work, daddy home, daddy work, mommy home mom. [00:32:54][6.4]
[00:32:54] It's so ridiculous. [00:32:54][0.4]
[00:32:55] And so but I think that the melding of, you know, working from different environments, even in the same environment, in different ways, not everyone at a desk or different things like that really just started breaking down the walls of realizing that there isn't really the difference between the individual and personal and individual in business, at least not when it comes to values that we're talking about. Absolutely. Are going to carry those over. I agree with that. [00:33:20][24.5]
[00:33:20] So let's look forward to the next leg, if you could like. Very. Optimistically, like, let's not talk reality here, like optimistically over the next three years, if you could say you wanted several things done or what you what you envision for your consulting firm, what would they be? [00:33:37][17.5]
[00:33:39] That's a great question. So one of the things that when we had the ME2 backlash that I started doing last year, I did a retreat with a friend and fellow entrepreneur in Costa Rica. [00:33:52][13.6]
[00:33:53] And it was really it was such a wonderful experience. [00:33:55][2.4]
[00:33:56] And I'd really like to do more of that, of bringing women together so they can have this shared experience and understand that what has happened to them, whether professionally or personally, is very similar to what has happened to other women. I think one of the things I experienced early in my career when I was a young lawyer, it was sexual harassment, but it was the marginalization of Gore. Not good enough to do this work. It wasn't sexual in nature. But we're not going to include you because you are female. [00:34:27][31.1]
[00:34:28] And there was shame in that. And taking that shame and riding with that for such a long period of time throughout my own career. And I know a lot of other women do that as well. And to understand that there's nothing that you have been through, that someone else has also been through and there's nothing wrong with you, you didn't do anything wrong. Let's unpack this. Let's get to the root of it and let's empower you to go out there and be different in the future. And so I would love to be doing more of the group coaching workshops, retreats in particular, and empowering other women to help themselves and then to reach back and take other women along with them. [00:35:04][36.7]
[00:35:05] That's one of the statistics and one of the things that just as a personal goal for myself I'm working with right now, one of the things that is appalling is we see when women are promoted into leadership positions, it's fifty one percent less likely that another women woman will be promoted behind them. And so we have this idea of if we see 10 seats on the board and only one is filled by a woman, it's that one seat that we're competing for rather than realizing that there are actually 10 seats. And we need to visualize 10 women. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, how many women are too many on the Supreme Court or are enough? And she said nine. So now it's moving in that direction and helping our sisters out and realizing that it's our job to whom much is given. Much is expected to mentor and educate and assist younger women coming up the pipeline rather than excluding them. [00:35:56][51.2]
[00:35:57] And yeah. And being the only one. [00:35:59][2.2]
[00:35:59] Yeah. I mean, who is the change that we need to like? You've got to look forward to the next generation and in coaching and getting more evangelists out there as Microsoft likes to use what is a Microsoft evangelist. [00:36:11][11.9]
[00:36:12] And I was I haven't met one yet, but I just can't wait because I hope they evangelize Microsoft. But I think we need we need more female evangelists. Exactly like you're saying. I think it's the next stage to really changing and and still doing like the grassroots thing, but really changing and leading up people to go out and change their communities is you get those micro influences and things like that happening. That's awesome. That sounds like a really fun three years with you. [00:36:38][26.5]
[00:36:40] So if you ran into someone, let's say it was a young woman or a non binary individual or a female identified anyone other than not a white male, and they came up to you and they said, listen, Christian, I bounced around, said I was going to do some acting. Turns out no. And I I did some great work in DC. [00:37:02][22.3]
[00:37:03] I got my juris doctor and I'm doing some stuff. [00:37:08][4.4]
[00:37:08] I'm looking at it looking around. And I think I'm gonna start a consulting firm. I'm not sure where I'm really at, but I really want to get a superceding inclusion. [00:37:14][5.8]
[00:37:14] What are the top three pieces of advice that you would give that individual if they were starting a diversity and inclusion firm? [00:37:22][7.2]
[00:37:23] First of all, to listen. That's I think when we communicate, we think we're holding conversations. [00:37:29][5.7]
[00:37:29] And what we really need to be doing is taking in with the other person is saying so going to communities and ask them what they need, what they wish was different, what that would look like for them and how they would do it, and then creating a platform and a process in which that can actually happen. So it's going to the audience that you would like to serve or the community would like to serve and asking them what they need. [00:37:53][23.9]
[00:37:55] And I think to it's the other thing that I would I would add to that is you have to take risks and you have to do it before you're ready. I remember when I was first starting off as an entrepreneur, I had dreams of being an entrepreneur and everything had to be perfect before I started and had to look a certain way. And if I was going to make a video, the lighting had to be a certain way. And some of the best advice I got was you need to do it before you're ready. And if you're not embarrassed by your first offering, then you've waited too long. And so just go out there, do it, put it on the table, because that is the best way to learn it. It feels very raw. It feels very vulnerable. I'm not going to tell you that it's comfortable and that it's a great feeling. But but do it anyway. That's where you get the best advice and the best forward momentum. [00:38:42][46.9]
[00:38:43] Absolutely. So, listen, create a platform based on how you can solve your people's client's needs and move before you're ready. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah, I follow is I can't remember if it's LinkedIn or who is it. It's one of the big the big cats in Silicon Valley, but their motto is move quickly before they're engineers. [00:39:09][26.2]
[00:39:10] It's move quickly and break things like that's my mantra. [00:39:13][3.2]
[00:39:14] I love it because it's opposite of everything, especially as women that we've been to like, be quiet, don't touch, don't look, don't break. Don't, don't, don't, don't, boys. We're allowed to be a little bit more rowdy. In fact, they were defended when they were too rowdy. But the idea that someone came forward in their business model of computer programing and said move quickly and break things, it's this idea of like stop tiptoeing around it, like build it fast and then come back in and reanalyze. And I think that what you're saying with your business career is crucial, especially for women or any other underdog. That's coming up. It's like you cannot second guess it and you can't think about the backlash or being shy. You have to just. Yeah, and can I say something to that point? [00:40:01][46.2]
[00:40:01] Because it's interesting, because that motto usually does serve men and it doesn't serve women because of the implicit bias that goes into being female. So educating ourselves on that and then being able to say, would you have said that if I were a man? Because there's this thing called likability versus competence. There's this thing called potential versus accomplishment. There's this thing called the maternal bias. So I don't think you'd be saying that to me if not for and really laying it out there and educating as you're having to push forward and push forward. [00:40:30][29.3]
[00:40:31] Absolutely. I completely agree. I love those three pieces of advice. I think there's something to move forward with for everyone. And I really appreciate you speaking with me today. I know that you are wildly busy and I don't know anybody who isn't. But from your calendar, it looks crazy. And I thank you so much for speaking with us today and lending us your voice and your story and your candor. [00:40:52][21.1]
[00:40:53] Oh, thank you so much for having me. [00:40:54][1.2]
[00:40:54] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving me your time for the past half an hour. And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself. Slaínte. [00:40:54][0.0]
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