S3 E6 Katherine Turner

Change the Reel website

S3E6 Katherine Turner on Equity-Centered Leadership - Why Representation Matters Katherine Turner, founder of Global Citizen LLC, joins Monique Velasquez and Piper Kessler to break down equity-centered leadership, why the anti-DEI movement is based on false messages, and how diverse leadership teams outperform homogenous ones—economically, socially, and spiritually. Katherine has worked in 50+ countries across five continents as a strategic equity-centered consultant, leadership coach, and social change agent. She challenges the false dichotomy between diversity and merit, explains why imposter syndrome is really "imposter systems," and shares how to create psychologically safe teams that flourish. In This Episode You'll Learn: - Why circumstances of birth shouldn't determine our futures - The false message: "We value diversity, but not at the expense of merit"—and why that assumption is biased - Why diverse leadership teams outperform homogenous ones (the data is overwhelming) - How the anti-DEI movement perpetuates false messages about equity work - The six signature traits of inclusive leadership (including courage to buck the status quo) - Why imposter syndrome is actually "imposter systems"—internalized negative messages from oppressive systems - How to interrupt biased thinking: Recognize, interrupt, replace, or ask open-ended questions - Why representation matters for young people who need to see themselves in leadership - How Katherine uses media and storytelling to spark dialogue and challenge biases - Why alignment (mission, vision, values, policies) = organizational peace and well-being Key Timestamps: 00:05 - Circumstances of birth shouldn't determine futures 12:29 - Our identities shouldn't pre-determine our outcomes 14:22 - Coming out as queer lesbian, interrogating white identity 17:50 - Creating a multiracial, queer blended family 21:34 - Recognizing biases, interrupting them, replacing them 22:05 - Leadership coaching: Replacing internalized negative messages 29:36 - "Why would you assume diversity reduces merit or excellence?" 33:42 - Anti-DEI campaigns perpetuate false messages 34:22 - Six signature traits of inclusive leadership 36:01 - Diverse leadership teams outperform homogenous ones 38:01 - Values Clarification for Action and Transformation methodology 39:08 - Using media to spark dialogue: Documentary films, photos, headlines The False Dichotomy: Too often, predominantly white leaders say: "We value diversity, but not at the expense of merit and excellence." Katherine's response: "Why would you assume that having a more diverse leadership team would necessarily reduce your merit or excellence? Isn't that the assumption you're making—that if you increase diversity, you sacrifice excellence?" The Truth: The data is clear and overwhelming. Organizations with diverse and inclusive senior leadership outperform those that don't—economically, socially, and spiritually. Global Citizen LLC Services: - Individual & Team Leadership Coaching (C-suite development, emerging leader development) - Organizational Consulting (strategic assessments, visioning, planning, execution) - Training & Workshops (Values Clarification for Action and Transformation, global competence, bias mitigation, psychological safety) Work with Katherine Turner: [email protected] Work with Velasquez Media: velasquezmedia.com | [email protected] Production: Velasquez Media - 20+ years helping mission-driven organizations create video strategies that work #EquityCenteredLeadership #DiversityAndInclusion #InclusiveLeadership #DEI #RepresentationMatters #LeadershipCoaching #OrganizationalTransformation #GlobalCitizen #PsychologicalSafety #SystemicEquity

CHANGE THE REEL with Piper and Monique

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Executive Producers: Monique Velasquez and Piper Kessler

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Copyright 2026 Monique & Piper

I am really someone who values equity.

I think that our circumstances of birth

shouldn't determine our futures, that our identities

around the race, ethnicity, gender that we're

born into shouldn't pre-determine the outcomes

for us, that we should all have equitable opportunities to flourish and thrive.

Change the Real with Monique Velasquez and Piper Kessler.

For more than 20 years, we've worked in video production behind the scenes, helping

mission-driven organizations and leaders.

This podcast exists for leaders who know their

stories matter and are ready to stop guessing

and start using video strategically to further their mission.

Not just fill a contact calendar.

Each month, we drop two types of episodes.

One with Piper and I kicking it, sharing

production insight from our own work, and another featuring

real stories about using media to create change and connection.

This is Change the Reel.

Representation starts here.

Hey y'all.

I'm Monique Velasquez.

And I'm Piper Kessler.

Today, we're here in the studio with our friend, Katherine Turner.

We know she is a champion of equity in health

spaces and working with leaders as they contemplate

their missions and goals.

But not just in the health spaces, in all kinds of spaces for leaders.

Katherine is the founder and president of

Global Citizen LLC, a strategic equity-centered

consulting, coaching, and training for

transformation firm and adjunct professor in leadership systems

and design thinking, global health equity, and intercultural competence.

She is an internationally recognized

consultant, leadership coach, trainer, speaker, board

member, and social change agent who has

worked in English, French, and Dutch in more than

50 countries spanning five continents.

Global Citizen LLC celebrates with leaders

in all sectors across the United States and

worldwide to develop high-performing

leaders and teams, conduct strategic assessments,

visioning, planning, and execution, drive

organizational transformation to align vision,

mission, values, policies, strategies, and

culture, and deliver high-impact results for

a better world.

We love that.

I couldn't have said it better.

Welcome to Change the Reel, where representation starts here.

So Global!

I love Global Citizen.

I love that you are like 50 countries in different languages, in different places.

If you were going to give flowers, who would

you give flowers to that encouraged you, helped

you along your entrepreneurial journey?

And it could be somebody you don't know, somebody you haven't met.

Right.

Who would that be?

So many people to give flowers to.

That's good!

I love to give flowers, and I love to receive flowers.

I'd start with my family.

So my beautiful blended family, my son,

Jaden, my former partners, Valerie and Jackie, and

this incredible, beautiful blended family that we created.

And it's a multiracial, multiethnic,

multisexual orientation, gender identity family.

And so our family and what we've done and

what we've had to endure to create this beautiful

family in a world that doesn't see and

recognize families like ours or actively discriminates

against them has been a real inspiration

for me to work to create a better world, which

is our tagline.

And then my parents and grandparents.

So my mom always encouraged me to live without regret.

And my dad is also was an entrepreneur and an executive leader.

And my grandparents really instilled in us

strong values and integrity, which is core

to who I am and who our business is.

And then our beloved community, which my

chosen family and friends, so my friend Gita,

who really mentored and inspired me to start

the firm, and Robin, and Tamara, and Milan,

and so many other friends who have really supported me along the way.

And Maria Montessori, who inspired Global Citizen.

So when my son was in Montessori school and I

was leading our, essentially our DEI, diversity,

equity and inclusion work at his school,

learning about her teachings on global citizenry

and how we teach and develop global citizens

to act ethically in the world is really what

inspired me to start my firm and to name it Global Citizen.

That is beautiful.

That something that you are compelled to

do, put your kid in school, really helped form

or at least help you funnel that focus into action.

Yeah.

I love that.

I love that.

Tell us a little about your business.

You talk about Global Citizen and sort of

these great ideas that have pushed you in that.

What's the heart of what you do?

Yeah.

Why do you get up out of bed every day and run to work?

Run!

I am really driven by transformation and

equity are really the through lines of what I've

done throughout my life, both personally and professionally.

And so with Global Citizen, as you did such a lovely job of introducing our firm,

we're a strategic equity centered consulting,

coaching, and training for transformation firm.

And so we work with individuals, leaders

and teams and staff at organizations really in

all sectors across the US and around the world.

And we work at different levels.

So I do individual and team leadership coaching and development.

I work with leaders on the C-suite.

So developing effective, inclusive

leadership teams, work with organizations to conduct

strategic assessments, strategic visioning,

planning and execution, landscape analyses

to really help them understand what is their current state.

And from honestly, what's their current state?

Bringing in an outside person as a consultant

really enables me to conduct interviews, focus

group discussions, survey responses, and

really hear honestly about what their organizational

state is, what people's experience is in their organization and with their leaders.

And then again, conducting a landscape analysis

allows me to look at what's the broader landscape

that these leaders and organizations are operating in.

What are the trends?

What are changes afoot?

What are risks and opportunities that they

need to be aware of so that they can conduct

so we can conduct strategic visioning

assessment and planning to help them envision and then

execute and move towards this future that they see for themselves.

So just to help parse out some of the very

detailed information you gave us there is

that what I see is you like sort of

learning about spaces and connecting away or a path

to this vision.

And the vision can be internal to the organization.

But I see the global citizen and that idea

that there's a better world out there, which

I just I love having smart, capable people

out in the world doing a lot of this, you

know, you know, pushing through the chaos, pulling these visions together.

And it sounds like that's the kind of work that really makes you happy.

It does.

And ultimately, I'm really driven by helping

organizational leaders and teams gain clarity

around their current state and their

desired future state and how they're going to get

there because so often people take these kind of piecemeal approaches.

They'll try this, they'll try that.

But there's not a coherent strategy.

So I love strategy.

I'm really driven by that, strategy for purpose and meaning and mission.

And so purpose being for a better world, for equity, for everyone.

And so how do we create that?

Because too often, I think people think that

it's unattainable that - and certainly there are

a lot of goals that we might not reach in

our lifetime or our vision, we may not fully

achieve. But we have to know we have to be

able to envision the world that we want and

then and then figure out how we're going to work to create it.

And I love collaborating with leaders on that

and to help them see that your vision matters,

that we can create a plan to help you get towards that vision.

And and that, again, we may not achieve

all of it in our lifetime, but at least we're

moving towards it. And we're also

developing future leaders who will carry the torch.

So that sounds like so much of like that

maybe there was a specific moment, I'm wondering,

where you were like, oh, I see where this is

lacking in the world or where I'm not where

I can do this. Was there a specific event or?

You know, it's not necessarily a specific

event, but really my whole life, I have been

acutely attuned to disparities to

discrimination. I mean, I remember even as a child growing

up as a white person in a white, predominantly

white family, just being really aware of inequities

around race and systemic racism around

gender. I was always a very strong woman. I always

challenged my family members and then later

organizational leaders to identify and address

systemic biases, whether it was systemic

racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia.

And I just think some of it is kind of how

I'm wired. Some of it was my global upbringing.

So my family moved around a lot and

including to London my middle school year. So and we

traveled and traveled a lot during those

years as well. And those were - So when you're in London,

you got to go like a lot of European

countries, just be able to be so close to London and

then go to France and wherever.

Yeah. So our family trips were around the

UK and around Europe. Our school trips were

to Greece and Crete and to Florence, Italy

when I was in sixth grade and seventh grade.

I mean, I went to the American School in

London, which was really an international school of

kids whose parents lived all over the

world and some of whom had never actually lived

in the US. And so from a young age, I was

learning French, I was traveling to different

countries in a very international community.

And so that also, I think, allowed me to step

outside of my own culture and really

question a lot about the cultural assumptions I was

raised with in the US to realize that the way the US does things are not always the

best.

What is what is one of those as a kid that

you were thinking, this seems a little bit

better than what we did back in the States.

Yeah, definitely economic equity. And I

was also an international exchange student in

the Netherlands when I graduated from high

school before I went to college. And I lived

with a Dutch family and there's nothing

like living with another family to really make

you question your family norms as well as

your cultural norms. And a lot of people in

the school were challenging US capitalism

and really having me engage in debate with

them about the merits of capitalism versus

the merits of more of a socialist government

and society. And a lot of the practices that

the Dutch government and people were engaging

in, caused me to realize that I am really someone

who values equity. I think that our circumstances

of birth shouldn't determine our futures,

that our identities around the race, ethnicity,

gender that we're born into shouldn't

pre-determine the outcomes for us, that we should all have

equitable opportunities to flourish and

thrive. And so that being challenged around kind of

the economic systems also caused me to look at

broader systems and again, systems of oppression

and systems of equity.

That is very self-aware for a young

person, right? You know, we've had different

guests talk about that moment. And so for

you, it's all woven into lots of different

things because it's about economics. It's

about your place as a foreigner in another

country and having question, I mean, that

forces you to start thinking about it, right?

Right.

Because it's not the default.

What we take for granted or not everyone,

but what many people in the US may take for

granted as "the way" to do things, the way

systems are, the way societies are, obviously is not.

And that really led me into studying and

understanding intercultural competence and global competence

and then creating my firm's global

competence model and training programs to really teach

people that we need to understand and recognize

diverse cultures and that there isn't a superior

culture and inferior culture, that there are

these differences that we need to recognize

and value. And then to really understand how

do we create multicultural systems, whether

they're multicultural organizations,

multicultural schools, multicultural communities. And so

that really informed my work around global competence.

So as you're growing up, at some point, we

all figure out there's something about us

that might be a little different.

Yeah.

We figured out, you know, differently, right?

Yeah.

Like, yeah, I've got this other thing

going on. And what was the awakening that there

was something else about who you were that just set you apart?

Yeah, I think that one, my identity as a

US citizen in the world and really embracing

my identity as a global citizen rather than

only a US citizen, because that is what resonated

for me. There's so many cultures that

resonate for me. And seemingly from birth, my best

friend from elementary school who I connected

with later on Facebook said, from third grade,

you were talking about being a Peace Corps

volunteer in Africa. And it's like, how did

I know? I don't have any family members who

are in the Peace Corps, I didn't know anyone.

Well, I had family members who, one who was

an ambassador and his wife, and they lived

in different places. But I didn't have

experience at the Peace Corps in Africa, really, in my

family. So where did that idea come from at

such a young age? And so global citizen identity,

certainly my identity as a strong woman

growing up in a family where mostly, but not all of

the men in my family were working outside

the home. And many of the women were working

as mothers and as caring for the home. And yet I

always knew, and my aunt, though, was a teacher,

and she did consulting for National Geographic.

And she really inspired me to be a professional

woman and being a strong woman and then coming

out as a queer lesbian after college. But even in

college was really high school and college were

really formative years around my identity as a

feminist and, again, challenging systems of

oppression around gender and for women and

gender more broadly. And then coming out as a

queer lesbian after college and realizing that

that was another difference that I had been

kind of working my way through around my own sexual

identity and gender identity. And then as time

has gone on, really interrogating my identity as a

white person in a world with systemic racial

oppression and white supremacy and increasingly

understanding about gender diversity and really

supporting trans rights and the right for bodily

autonomy and gender autonomy. And so it's

been an evolution. Yeah. You have this, you know,

I know that you worked at Ipas, which is, you

know, renowned for its women's, how do I say this,

just I mean, think about what we did in Mexico,

right? Sexual reproductive health and rights. Yes, thank you.

Yeah. Sexual reproductive health and rights,

which is, sad to say, not a universally accepted idea.

And we see a lot of these rights being revoked

inside of our own country. But I also see this

as an interesting way for somebody who's

queer, where, you know, reproductive rights are

absolutely in the form of because you don't

necessarily advocate for not having a family.

For - but only for yourself, right? But that would

be, but the thing is, that's not who you are either,

because you actually have a family and you

created a family in a way that I think is just

an amazing conscious effort of creating family.

Yeah, yeah, very intentionally. I always knew I

wanted to have a child or children. I thought

growing up that I would likely adopt, but then my

former partner, Jackie, really wanted us to have

a child biologically, didn't want to carry, and I

was very open to artificial insemination. And

so we went that route and we selected an African

American donor because she's African American.

And we wanted him to represent, I knew I would

carry. So we wanted him to represent, you

know, our family cultures and found a donor who was

African American. And it was a beautiful

experience. It was really beautiful to be pregnant, to be able

to carry our son. I'm one of the few women really

in the world who's had one intended pregnancy in

my lifetime. And then that resulted in the

birth of a healthy baby and my only child. I mean,

for many women have experienced miscarriage and

abortion and, you know, a variety of different

reproductive health experiences. And our son is

21. And he's a wonderful young man who we're just

so incredibly proud of. And then to form this

multiracial queer and straight, our son, extended

family and blended family in again, a world

that is where we're just experiencing so much

discrimination. I remember with my former

partner, we would go places as an interracial couple and

then family and just the assumptions people would

make. People often assumed I wasn't Jaden's birth

mother because he's biracial and presents as

African American and I'm white. And so even the

kids at his school would say like, "Who's his real

mommy?" and, you know, "real" again, the ways that we

don't authenticate, we don't recognize and

validate families in all of our forms. Right.

Yeah. And then the discrimination that Jackie

and I would experience where people thought I was,

assumed I was her social worker. And even my son,

I brought him to an appointment when he was a young

adult. And the person came in the room and said,

"Are you his social worker?" to me. I said, "I'm his

mother." And why are you assuming that I'm his

social worker? Yeah. There are so many, like,

you know, interesting things. My cousin, who

also had a child that presented very, very white.

And she would often get accosted for having

this child with her. She's, you know, darker,

complexion, but we're about the same complexion. It

was just amazing the stories that I would hear.

And yes, they should be challenging if they

think a child is in distress, but that was not

necessarily the case when they were being

challenged. Yeah. And I assume the same thing

for you. Yeah. And so I hate that that happened

to you, but it does inform how you interact in the

world. Absolutely. I mean, this is these are the

lived experiences and the stories that I bring to

the work we do around addressing and mitigating

biases is knowing that we all have biases. It's

natural and evolutionary that we've developed

to think and think in biased ways. And there is a

plus to that evolutionarily. But now there's a

lot of harm that can also come from it. And so

instructing people about, again, that you're not

a bad person because you have biased thinking or

thoughts, we all do. But what do we do with

those? How do we recognize those biases? How do we

interrupt them? How do we stop ourselves

when we have the thought, which we all will have

at some point, how do we stop ourselves and say,

okay, I'm going to recognize what's happening and

I'm going to interrupt it, I'm going to replace

it, or I'm going to ask an open-ended question,

I'm not going to make an assumption. And so this is the kind of training that we do

for organizations and leaders. And so, you

know, talking about when you look at these

challenges, what kind of challenges

do you find most rewarding when you get past,

you know, these these these ideas? Yeah, well,

I love my leadership coaching. And I come off of

each leadership call, a coaching call, just

euphoric, because I get to work with either

individuals or pairs. So sometimes, and I

work at leader with leaders at different levels,

I want to say I teach leadership for master's

students at UNC Chapel Hill. And I always tell

my students, everyone is a leader at their level,

because we need good leadership. And we need good

followership as well. We don't often learn

about followership, ethical followership, because it

takes leaders and followers to really create good

leadership, and that everyone's a leader. And so I

do leadership coaching and development at these

different levels, either for more seasoned leaders

or for emerging leaders, individually, sometimes

in teams or pairs, if I have leaders who are at

the same level, it's helpful for them to have

individual leadership as well, coaching as well

as group coaching, or again, in teams. And I find

that really rewarding because so many of us have

internalized those messages. So people are

dealing with imposter syndrome, or imposter systems.

And these negative self talk, these ways that we

have internalized these negative messages about

ourselves that are not true, but they are

messages that we've, again, heard and internalized from

outside systems. And so helping leaders understand

what are those internalized messages, and replace

them with accurate messages, and then act on that

and really be able to blossom into the leaders they

were meant to be is a beautiful process. And then

working with teams in that way, where I've always

been drawn to stigmatized topics, probably

because of being a queer lesbian, and because of being

attuned to systemic racism from a young age.

And so when teams or leaders come to me and say,

we're having a lot of challenges, there's a lack of

trust, our culture, we've got some culture issues,

we've got people who are not on the same page,

we don't have a shared vision or goal. I love that

because - I do! It's juicy, right? It's juicy. I

like problem solving. And my father was a problem

solver as an executive. So I think growing up, we

heard a lot of his stories. And, and I like when

I don't like that people have the problems,

but it's very satisfying to come in and be that

active listener to talk with individuals

privately and really hear, you know, the real story about

this leader thinks they're so inclusive, but they

don't listen, they interrupt, they, you know, they

don't respond well when we propose alternative

ideas - people's self perception, and then the

perception of their teams are often quite

different. And it's important for me to be able to hear

honestly from their team members about what their

experiences are, and then bring that to the leader

privately and provide private supportive

coaching to them to say, there's some ways that you can

improve your leadership, it's going to make

you better, it's going to make your team and your

organizations better. That's immensely

satisfying. What kind of like, without naming names, like,

what are some of the messages that you've

heard back like, you know, I like I found myself,

blah, blah, blah? From the leadership, the

leaders that I've coached? When they have a breakthrough. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I

mean, I've, so one person I'm working with now is

a black woman leader, and so incredibly capable,

so skilled, and so successful when I asked her to

tell me a story about what she's doing on her team,

what she's doing in her work out in the world. And

she tells me these incredible stories. And then I

hear what her direct boss, who's very high up

in the organization is saying to her, and there's

just a total mismatch that they are not seeing

the leader who she really is. And she's internalized

that. So helping is when she first came to me,

she said, "I feel stuck. I feel unseen, unheard,

I feel like my value really, like they're not

seeing the leader who I really am." And I agree

with her. And so if we can work on her,

helping to shape, manage up and helping to shape the

environment, if it's not the right environment,

sometimes it means that it's time for a change.

And then give working with that person to help

them learn the confidence to gain the confidence

and the accurate self-understanding and the

recognition that there's, they have so many

more opportunities that they're not stuck is

just, again, incredibly gratifying. And then

working with a pair of emerging leaders who are

in a this is a different organization, a global

organization that works on, broadly, on

international development and evaluation. And, and that they

these pair of leaders were emerging and were

wanting to be - their senior leadership wisely

recognized the importance of investing in leaders

in their leadership to help them develop them into

more senior leaders. And their team was lacking

in some psychological safety. Again, the senior

leadership had good intentions. They had some

good practices, but there were things they were doing

where the team wasn't feeling trusted fully to

be in charge that there was a little micromanaging

happening. And, and so just helping to coach

them at again, the senior leaders and the emerging

leaders on how to create more psychological

safety on their team, how to trust their emerging

leaders to take on more and more

responsibility while providing some safeguards so that they

had some support and mentorship. There's a whole

process we go through to help develop these teams

and organizations. Listening to the types of,

you know, sticking points for the companies,

the people that you're working for, really is

very eye opening to me, because you're able to

vocalize and put words to things that I sort of

just are watching and trying to put together my

own head about what's happening. And so I find

it amazing that you really do have a full-on grasp

and they're helping me just sitting here

think about how to weave a lot of this in and what

challenges are actually there. So thank you. Sure, my

pleasure. I appreciate that. Maybe we could go back to that issue of

representation and inclusion that you were asking

about. And so for me, it wasn't a moment, but just

recognizing the data for one thing. I take a real

data-driven approach and also a really customized

approach. So every organization is different

and unique and it also there are a lot of similar

patterns. So it's kind of a both/and. And that's

where the strategic assessment comes in. And that

could be a rapid assessment or it could be a

more comprehensive assessment. To understand in your

organization what are the particular dynamics,

because we have to understand what the problems

are before we can develop appropriate solutions.

How often do people come in with a solution and

they really haven't done their work to understand

what the problems are. I have a hammer. Who's the

nail? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to look around for

this nail. So that's not we do a highly customized

work. Again, we have our own systems and

processes and forms and you know templates that we use,

but every organization is unique. So we're

going to understand the unique dynamics in that

organization and then we're going to develop

a really tailored customized solution for each

organization. And we know though that when we

look at the data both nationally and globally,

that senior leadership be it C-suite, boards of

directors, by and large are not representative of

the diversity in their organizations, let alone

of their constituents or their stakeholders that

they're aiming to serve. And that is a problem and

representation does matter.

This is why this whole anti-DEI war that the ultra-right conservative wings have

been successfully waging are really

concerning to me because they've been unfortunately

extremely effective in their messaging. This whole

anti-woke and just dismissing the incredibly

important strategic work of diversity, equity,

and inclusion as though we're being "woke" and we're

wrecking what system is in place. And this illusion

of pitting diversity against meritocracy, which

in and of itself is highly problematic because too

often I have leaders, often predominantly white

leaders who will say to me, "Well, yes, we value

diversity, but not at the expense of merit and

excellence." And then I come back and ask them,

"Why would you assume that having a more

diverse leadership team, a more diverse organization,

would necessarily reduce your merit or your

excellence?" Right. Are you assuming... So there

are a couple of things in that. One is this

assumption that predominantly white people have

inherently more merit. Very few people, some

people would say that, very few people would say

that consciously, but isn't that the assumption

you're making that if you work to increase the

diversity of your leadership team, that you

would necessarily have to sacrifice excellence? Isn't

that what? I know. And when you said your

biases, everybody had biases. Yes, we all do.

But you don't realize it's a bias until you have

to come up against... because if you're hearing

all of those things back, you've already decided

what the merit is, where we're evaluating, what

everything is. What the default is... And you never saw

outside of that. Exactly. And that's the big thing

when you said that, it was like, because you

got great training at a very young age of being

questioned. And then of course, that pushed

you into data because as a child, you're going,

"Oh, well, how do I say?" And you've got to

weigh everything, data driven. And so that...

I mean, how could you go into anything else?

It's pretty much... I do feel chosen for this work.

I mean, and it becomes a very... What did you

call it? Zone of genius! Your zone of genius.

It's genius. I mean, and that you get jazzed by

it. I mean, like right now, it's like when you

were saying, like you hear all these problems,

"Oh, we're about to come to you with these are our

issues." And it's like, "Oh, I know exactly where

we're going. We're going to... I can help you with

this." Where instead of right now being depressed

about things, it's like, it's also just the thing

of saying, well, if people are reaching out,

that's great on its own because you're looking outside.

Yeah. What were you going to say? No, go ahead.

No, go ahead. Well, people at different levels are

reaching out. And so, and that's where sometimes

it is the senior leadership. And then sometimes

it's more middle management who are recognizing

what's happening. Which that's fantastic. Yeah,

it's fantastic. And it's challenging because I

have to then work with the senior leadership

to help them understand. And breaking through a

lot of those barriers where, again, those false

messages of, "If I'm biased, then I'm a bad

person. If my senior leadership team is not currently as

diverse as it needs to be, then I must have done

something wrong to allow us to get here. I'm not

a racist. I'm not a sexist." All these messages,

and that's where the anti-woke campaign and the

anti-DEI campaigns are so dangerous because

they're perpetuating all these false messages about what

diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging work are,

the strategies are, and playing into people's fears

and people's sense of, "But I'm a good person."

And so I can assure them, "You are a good person.

You're a good person who is flawed as we all

are, as deeply imperfect humans. And you have been

working out of these assumptions, out of

these biases that we all have. And so let's work

together to learn what those are, to unlearn

those, and to practice something different."

It takes a lot of courage. It does. It does.

And so there we do the six signature traits of

inclusive leadership, which Deloitte Consulting

advanced. And so one of those elements of inclusive

leadership is courage, because you are bucking the

status quo. You're doing a lot of self-examination.

Yeah, you're pointing here. It is, and involves

a lot of self-work. I will say we've been very

successful. There are times where the leaders

that we're working with falter in their courage,

and we need to really bolster them, because it's

a lot to take this on. And even those leaders who

come to us and say, "We want you to help us, help

make us better, because we recognize that when we

can really embrace diversity, when we can

really advance inclusion and belonging so that people

can flourish," because let's face it, as humans,

we're wired for connection. We're wired for belonging.

Community.

Yes, community. It's literally how we're

wired as beings. Not only humans, other creatures,

are wired for belonging. We want to belong to

our family systems. We want to belong to our

organizational systems. So we know that to

flourish, people need that. I just went to a leadership

summit yesterday, forum, and the speaker was

talking about dignity, which was very informative,

around understanding that we all have an

inherent dignity, and that we often unintentionally will

breach others' dignity. And it's not something we

can't take away anyone's dignity, because that's

inherent. It's there. It's inherent to who we are, but we can

definitely harm others' dignity. And that is a key

piece in the organization, too. Some people see

this as a nice to have, not as - but it's not. It's mission

critical. It's mission critical. If you want

to succeed, the evidence on advancing diversity,

equity, inclusion in organizations is clear and

overwhelming. Overwhelming. Those organizations

that have diverse and inclusive and

representative senior leadership outperform those that don't.

Economic and socially. That's right. Spiritually,

if you will. Yeah, exactly. There is a spiritual

element to this as well. And this is

internal work, both individually, interpersonally,

intersystems, like you said, within the

organization. We do also look at their external

offerings, their programs, their services, what

they're offering out in the world, and whether

those are in alignment. So another key, I'd say

in addition to equity and transformation, another

key theme for me is around alignment. And as

someone who practices mindfulness and meditation

and yoga, also knowing that when we as individuals are operating in alignment,

we're in a place of peace. We're really

operating with a sense of peace and well-being. And that

extends up to the organizational level, too.

I work with those leaders to help them clarify

and then make adjustments to operate in

alignment with their mission, vision, values,

policy, systems, and structures for a better

world. I love all that. And I love that you're

doing that. I know. It's like, yeah, it's like

breathing for a person. I know. I'm like, that's

a heavy weight. I'm glad that you're out there.

So we want to circle back a little bit and talk

about media and using media and where

representation is. How do you use media in what you do?

Yeah, a number of ways. So there's a whole

methodology that I developed when I was at

Ipas and I now do on a consulting basis,

which is called "Values Clarification for Action and

Transformation." And so it's a whole methodology

that I and others developed around helping people

clarify their deeply held values and then

understand the realities of how systems are

operating in the world and then act in alignment

with those values. It's a very powerful process

that has a lot of applications. I developed

it at Ipas for work around abortion and sexual

reproductive health and rights to help health

care providers, to help policymakers, to help

community members, people in the legal system

understand what their values are and then what

the realities are for women and girls and

people with uteruses in their country or in their

communities who are needing access to safe and

healthy abortion care, which is a human right and

is part of a health system. Yes. Health is a human

right. And then to act in alignment with that.

And so I developed it around abortion care, but

it's really applicable in many, many different

ways. So we can apply it to immigration, we

could apply it to different policies. And so we use

storytelling in that I will show a

documentary film that's a short film. I use what I call,

I'll use something to spark dialogue. And so that

could be a headline from a news clip, could be a

photo, a very evocative photo. It could be a

video clip that quickly kind of succinctly summarizes

the problem. And then I engage them in deep

reflection and dialogue and then moving them

towards action based on that. So it's really

to, media is so important to help us connect on a

human level. There's a documentary film clip that

I use that was made in Ethiopia, but I've used

it all over the world. And I tested it to see

different audiences in Asia and Latin America,

different continents. Do you resonate with these

girls, with these women? Do you see yourself in

them with these healthcare providers? And

universally people said yes, the story is universal.

The particulars are particular to this town in

Ethiopia. But that's the power of art and media

and storytelling. Storytelling. You know,

paintings, I love using art to help people connect with each

other with with artists with humanity, and then

apply that in a very practical way of what does

this mean about ourselves? What does this

mean for our work and practices in the world?

I would love to get the short list of what media

you have collected for your, for this activity,

because I would just love to see what you've got

in the in the bucket. Yeah. So when you do some

of the calls and stuff, do you do any of the

live video or like a streaming chat, video chats and that sort of thing?

I have done some, yeah, LinkedIn lives and

Facebook and Instagram lives. I'd like to do

more of that. Yeah, I think it would be

extremely interesting to me. So when you do that,

include me in your announcements, and we

will absolutely push people in that direction.

Well, you all could help me, I'm sure. Oh, yes, we have the capacity to assist.

What's that? It's like cracking. It's like

the excitement for me is when you said about the

cracking of actually thinking and

questioning. Yeah. Right. It's like, that's like, my mom,

you know, she attributed, her father invested

in the first television that anybody had, right,

in their area. And she watched it. And it put

her up against all of the things that she had

been taught by her parents. Yeah. And so all

of a sudden, she's like, well, how as, you know,

she was a good Catholic schoolgirl. And it's like, how could she, she felt like

there should later, she was like, you, a woman

should have the right to whatever she chooses.

How do I align that and reconcile it? And she did.

And she could explain it to people. And she could

say, look, I for myself probably would never

choose that. But there's no way I'm going to tell

another woman. Right. And I will go out and I

will march and I will defend that. Yeah, absolutely.

And so that, you know, figuring out on their own

when they're not bobbing around and hearing the

same thing said back to them, cracking outside of

that and hearing a small voice that helps you start

going, well, is that a fact? Should I question?

Is being a woke, a bad thing? Right. So let me,

let me just add, you know, this is sparking an

idea for me in the fact that not just representation

about, you know, the color of our skin or

the, you know, where we're originating from,

but the idea that we are representing a challenge

to your bias. Because I think, you know, that can

be more intentional in what we put out and what

we talk about. Right. You have really helped me

start thinking a lot of different ways. So this

has been an amazing conversation. Yeah. I mean,

I'm very attuned to that when now when I consume

media, whether it is images or videos or stories,

I do automatically think about representation.

You know, you look at advertisements and you look

at if they have a group of people, do they

center the white person or do they have a person

of color in the middle? Is the white person

more to the side? Gender representation, you know,

these are again, all these ways that biases are

so embedded in how we think and then the products

we create. And so being more intentional is

incredibly important. And it also, it does make

the world a better place knowing that people,

because we know the importance of seeing ourselves

represented in these different positions. So

for, you know, young people to see themselves

represented in senior leadership in very visible

and clear ways is incredibly important for people

in organizations to see themselves represented

and see their leadership and know this is possible.

Yes. Yeah, it's incredibly important. And

that's one of the things that we want to advocate

for LGBTQ and people of color who are leaders

to step in front of the camera because it's not

just there's more, you're, you're more

representing. Yeah, exactly. It's a different representation

that happens. And so we are advocates for exactly

that. Which is so beautiful that you all are doing

this. And I do work, I serve on the board of my

alum, Duke and UNC. I'm very involved in the alum

associations because it's so important for

students to see queer alum who are flourishing

and thriving out in the world. And they have a

lot of questions with your own company, with our

own company. Exactly. That we can, you can found

and run a successful company, you can be a business

leader, you can be out and proud. Because

that's a lot of the questions students are asking is,

can I be out in the workplace professionally? Can

I found and run a business? Can I be a leader in

an organization and be out as a queer LGBTQ plus

person? And yes, yes, you can. And there's more,

I mean, there's context and globally and

different cultural contexts, there are a lot of nuances to

that. And yes, so it's so it is important for us

to be a role model, be a mentor, and also to engage

in intergenerational learning, which I find,

that's why I love teaching and working with my students

and younger generations, because there's so much we

can learn. And I do work a lot on intergenerational

conflicts, and resolution and relationships in

the workplace, because we have over five generations

in the workplace for the first time ever, five

generations in the workplace. And that's a go-to

for people being argumentative and going like,

Oh, well, they're coming in and they're, you know,

let me all these gens, let me put them under what

gen they are. Exactly. And that'll either excuse

their behavior or yeah, explain instead of

recognizing how much we have to learn from each

other. And it happens in every direction.

Sometimes younger people may dismiss older people's

contributions thinking, what do you know, that's

not how we do it anymore. "Ok Boomer." Yeah, older people can

dismiss younger people saying like, Oh, you're

just a gen X, whatever, or gen Z, what do you know? But there's

so much learning we have, why wouldn't we want to

learn from each other? Right. It's like you're running around

in the same group and it's like, Oh, you can have

access to someone else's brain who doesn't think

like yours at all. Yeah, exactly. And that's

that's that. Yeah, it's critical. There's a whole thing

there, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, time

goes by so fast. We're on here having a good time. And

we love having a chance to introduce our audience

to amazing, capable business owners that show up

authentically that are making a difference,

not just for us here in the States, but globally.

We want to thank you for coming to Change the

Reel. Yeah, thank you so much. It's really my pleasure.

And I hope folks can reach out to us at

[email protected]. Yeah. So where can we see you

coming up in the near future? I know you do

webinars. Yeah, we do virtual webinars and workshops

in-person trainings and workshops as well. And

of course, consulting and coaching. So really

encourage people to reach out to us at

[email protected]. [email protected].

And that'll be in the show notes. LinkedIn and

also social media. We always promote our upcoming

events. And so reach out for leadership coaching,

for organizational consulting, training, for webinars,

workshops, in-person, virtual, for leadership

team retreats, etc. To help make the world a better place.

For a better world. We appreciate you, Katherine.

My pleasure. We love this. Yeah. And we want to

thank you for tuning in to our channel. Thank you.

That's it for this episode of Change the Reel.

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Share the episode or leave a review wherever you listen.

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And if you're done with DIY and ready to record something that matters,

in a safe inclusive space, check out our studio

check out our studio at VelasquezMedia.com. Remember, representation starts here.

¡Hasta Pronto! See you soon!