In this episode, we chat with Amelia Ransom about busting racial stereotypes and the real deal with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at work. Amelia shares her personal stories and professional insights on making workplaces truly inclusive.
Key Takeaways:
- Stereotypes and Exhaustion: Amelia talks about dealing with racial stereotypes and the tiring task of always having to explain cultural norms.
- Real DEI Efforts: Get the scoop on what it takes to genuinely implement DEI in companies—hint: it’s more than just looking good on paper.
- Leadership Gaps: Explore why there are so few women, especially in the Fortune 500, leading major companies.
Guest:
Amelia Ransom, VP Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Smartsheet; veteran DEI leader with decades of experience at companies including Nordstrom and Avalara.
Resources Mentioned:
- Amelia Ransom: LinkedIn, Instagram, and X
- Fast Company articles written by Ransom: “Corporate DEI strategies are too focused on hiring. Here’s what to do instead” and “How to evaluate your diversity and engagement programs using employee feedback“
- Latest Fortune 500 Female CEO Stats
Quotes:
-“You have to just be better. There is no just feeling better. There is only being better.” – Amelia Ransom
-“How do I make sure you are not just at the table, but you have helped create the table? How do I hear your voice and incorporate that voice?” – Amelia Ransom
Listener Challenge:
This week, think about how your workplace handles DEI and find one way to make it better. Share your ideas with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Amelia Ransom. Welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. So good to have you here.
[00:00:04] Amelia Ransom: Mark, this is great. I’m so glad to be in this space with you today.
[00:00:09] Mark Wright: I’ve been looking forward to our conversation because we’ve gotten to know each other over the past months. We’re both members of the Community Development Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce Sponsored Leadership Group in Seattle. And I think what most excites me about the conversation Our conversation, Amelia, is that you have a dedication to discussing diversity, equity, and inclusion in a way that is unvarnished, not in a brash way, but in a way that speaks just the absolute truth in your mind about what we need to do and be when it comes to DEI.
[00:00:41] Mark Wright: So you’re the vice president of DEI at Smartsheet., I am the opposite of a high tech guy. So for someone who doesn’t know what Smartsheet is, why don’t we start there?
[00:00:53] Amelia Ransom: We can absolutely start there. And I don’t know if I believe that about you, because you’ve got a whole lot of equipment there, that I can [00:01:00] see that if you’re listening to this podcast, you can’t see. But, Smartsheet is what we call a collaborative work management, tool. And so it allows people in various, all around the globe to partner on something together.
[00:01:12] Amelia Ransom: So you can use it for a small project. Like my husband and I used it to build a pool in our backyard, or you can use it to plan the Superbowl. Which they actually do. They use the smart sheet to plan the Super Bowl and all the little pieces that have to come in together. It’s a great way to get work done, with lots of different people, but keep the work moving forward.
[00:01:33] Mark Wright: I want to talk about your work history. You spent a number of years at Nordstrom., at a pretty high level., I I’d like to go back though, Amelia, and talk about your perceptions of work. You know, our podcast is dedicated to redeeming work and that is to make work better for everyone on all sides of the equation.
[00:01:51] Mark Wright: What’s your earliest memory of work when you were a kid? I’d love to start there.
[00:01:55] Amelia Ransom: Oh, wow. Well, my earliest memory of work probably is [00:02:00] my mother used to work for, what used to be called Southern Pacific Railroad. It is, now known by a different name. And we knew that she worked for the railroad company and because of that, we were always, we always wanted to count the trains as they went by and see how many Southern Pacific train cars would go by.
[00:02:17] Amelia Ransom: And we knew that she worked in making sure that the literally that the trains ran on time. And so that’s my 1st memory and understanding of work that my mother went to work. My father went to work. My father worked for Sears. He is very fond of saying when he was working for Sears and management that the only black thing besides him there were the telephones.
[00:02:38] Amelia Ransom: And so it was a time he, listen, if he were alive today, Mark, he would tell you that story., and so we always, I always knew what my parents did. And I always knew that they worked really hard. My father never had fewer than three jobs. And so when he quote unquote retired and only had one job, he felt like he was really doing something.
[00:02:59] Amelia Ransom: Cause he didn’t really know [00:03:00] what to do with his, with his time, unless he was working or doing something for work. So I think those are my earliest memories of what is work and what does work mean.
[00:03:09] Mark Wright: And where did you grow up?
[00:03:11] Amelia Ransom: I grew up in Los Angeles, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and, have lived in a lot of different places around the country, but Los Angeles is home.
[00:03:20] Mark Wright: So as you got older and you’re in school. What was coming to mind in terms of what you wanted to do for your life’s work?
[00:03:30] Amelia Ransom: You know, I cannot, I don’t know when or how I decided that. I really don’t. If to know me now is to know a person who’s comfortable speaking publicly, who’s comfortable with her words, but to know me as a child is to know someone who used my older brother to speak for me. I wouldn’t talk to people. I wouldn’t do that.
[00:03:53] Amelia Ransom: So to find that I have a career actually where I speak and I have to present things and do that would shock anyone [00:04:00] who knew me before high school. But I knew that it would have something to do. with improving or giving voice to people who, were, I don’t want to say voiceless, because maybe that’s not accurate, but whose voices weren’t widely heard, known, or understood.
[00:04:21] Amelia Ransom: My mother used to tell me that everybody is somebody’s hero. And one of my heroes was the guy who sat on a folding chair, outside the apartment complex that was on the corner because he always made sure I got to the school bus on time and he made sure I walked to my house on time, right? And he told me not to get in trouble.
[00:04:39] Amelia Ransom: But I don’t know if everybody would look at him as a hero, but
[00:04:43] Mark Wright: He was looking out for you, right?
[00:04:44] Amelia Ransom: He was. He was. And I was, I knew I’d be in trouble if I didn’t go straight home. And so I, I have always wanted to amplify those voices because I think we have a misunderstanding of communities we don’t understand. Growing [00:05:00] up in South Central LA, like movies have been made about my neighborhood that aren’t inaccurate, but also aren’t the full story of what happens there, right?
[00:05:09] Amelia Ransom: You would assume that people who are from South Central Los Angeles don’t care about their neighborhoods, or they’re not sending their kids to school, or they’re not. We had a garden in my backyard. Like, I was a debutante, don’t judge me., like I did my homework and studied for the SATs with my friends.
[00:05:27] Amelia Ransom: Like, and these things were celebrated in my neighborhood, but you don’t know that if you aren’t connected to someone from there and it can be challenging to get authentic stories out about people and communities that you live so far away from, where I said this before, like we sometimes learn about each other from so far away that all we can see are the caricatures.
[00:05:53] Amelia Ransom: We don’t actually see each other. We see a persona and that isn’t real.
[00:05:59] Mark Wright: Yeah. [00:06:00] How did growing up in South Central L. A. shape who you are today? In just terms of your, worldview, and I’m guessing your, family and your community, uh, were such a big part in shaping who you are as well, right?
[00:06:13] Amelia Ransom: I guess I didn’t know that it was different than anybody else’s growing up until people told me I was supposed to think it was different., I was bused. So I am a Gen X er and I was part of the busing experiment in Los Angeles. The first busing experiment really in Los Angeles in third grade. So in third grade, I was bused from my neighborhood school.
[00:06:34] Amelia Ransom: to a school in a white community about 45 minutes away from my house. And I didn’t understand really what was happening. I’m in third grade, but what I knew was my parents thought that I should have this chance at a quote, better education and wanted to provide this experience for me. But that the risk was that [00:07:00] you would learn that everything in your neighborhood is bad because that is what you learn by default when you are in a different area. They don’t understand your foods or the way you dress or, you know, why isn’t your mom here in the middle of the day at school, because it’s 45 minutes away. So my mom’s not here at school for like the school day or whatever it is.
[00:07:19] Amelia Ransom: So It shaped me in that I thought there was nothing wrong where I lived or the neighborhood or the people that I grew up with, but other people thought I should feel that I wasn’t as good or as smart or as capable simply because of where I came from.
[00:07:37] Mark Wright: Right, you had to be bussed out because you were being bussed from something that wasn’t as good as what was over there,
[00:07:44] Amelia Ransom: Right. And that then, but not just that had to be better. Everything had to be better. Right. That the neighborhood had to be better and your, the way that you. You know, spend your weekends is better. The foods that you eat are better. And [00:08:00] so I appreciate that my parents worked really hard to ensure that I still had a love of my people and my community.
[00:08:10] Amelia Ransom: And so most of the things that they contrived for me in my community were going to be Black. The doctor was Black. The insurance man was Black. Like the, tutor that I needed for algebra was Black. Like. There were going to be those things. So I understood there was still greatness in my neighborhood and that I wasn’t allowed to look quote unquote down at the students whose parents did not make the choice to bust them.
[00:08:34] Amelia Ransom: That was just a choice my parents made. It wasn’t a better or worse choice. It was just a choice.
[00:08:40] Mark Wright: Did they also see education, as sort of a, an equalizer, or something that was really, really important? Because I’ve talked with a lot of guests on this show who come from marginalized communities or diverse communities and almost to a person, their parents are like, look, [00:09:00] education is everything. So important.
[00:09:02] Mark Wright: And you’ve got to take this seriously because it’s going to take you where you want to go. And I’d, love to know what that felt like as you were growing up and, succeeding in school.
[00:09:11] Amelia Ransom: absolutely. Like that is absolutely my story. When I don’t know a black person, I’m sure this happens in other communities as well. But I don’t know a Black person who was not expressly told by their parents, you have to be twice as good. You have to be twice as good. Twice as good is the floor, not the ceiling.
[00:09:32] Amelia Ransom: Wherever you go from there is great, but you must be twice as good. So education was absolutely the key. And I had been in the seventies, when I grew up, they would, you know, you had to take all these academic tests and I was tested as gifted. Now what that meant, I have no idea, but that was part of the reason my parents chose to bust me because they thought, well, we’ve got this quote, gifted child.
[00:09:56] Amelia Ransom: How do we ensure they can’t afford private school? That’s not an option [00:10:00] for them. So what do I do with her to ensure? And I have a mother that needs to work every day. She can’t be in the classroom every day. I have a father that has three jobs. So school and the teachers and the environment there is going to have to be it.
[00:10:14] Amelia Ransom: Many parents can afford literally and figuratively afford to spend time with their kids and coaching and being in the classroom and ensuring they’re getting what they need. My parents couldn’t do that. And so what they did do though, was ensure that I understood that my job was to go to school and get good grades.
[00:10:35] Amelia Ransom: I had no other job. I mean, I have chores around the house, of course. But my job, and they called it that, my job is to go to school and get good grades. That is my job. And I could see the pride on my parents face when I would come home with my report cards. And so that made me happy to know that I was making them happy.
[00:10:52] Amelia Ransom: But nothing came before education. Nothing came before school. I could ask for anything for school and get it. I don’t know how [00:11:00] they afforded these things. I had a Commodore 64 computer, which was like, right? Like the old, old computer, because somewhere my mother had read, like, smart kids need computers.
[00:11:10] Amelia Ransom: And so she’d figured out how to get me one. I think I used that thing like 10 times, mom. I didn’t know how to use it, but that’s what she was trying to seed. Like, whatever tool you need for this thing, I will give that to you at all times.
[00:11:25] Mark Wright: So take me through college and as you enter the working world, what that was like for you and what you sort of felt your calling, because eventually we’ll get to the storyline that you told me a few weeks ago, and that is that this DEI work, is really, has called you and it won’t let you go.
[00:11:45] Amelia Ransom: Mark, it won’t. And I keep trying to put it down. I keep like, I promise you, I have tried to break up. with DEI work multiple times. Like that is my truth. I don’t know if that’s a convenient truth or an inconvenient truth for people, but I really have [00:12:00] tried to break up with this, multiple times., college, was the whitest place that I had been, even whiter than the schools that I had gone to and
[00:12:08] Mark Wright: and where was college?
[00:12:09] Amelia Ransom: Pepperdine.
[00:12:11] Amelia Ransom: And I didn’t really enjoy it. I don’t know if we should keep that part in. I did not really enjoy it. Um, um, It’s the truth. But it was, I didn’t really understand conservative versus liberal. These were not concepts I really understood. So I didn’t really understand I was going to a conservative school, even though it was in the state of California.
[00:12:37] Amelia Ransom: So I didn’t know that I was going to go to school with stu with other students who had literally never encountered Black people before and who had questions like, Oh, Black people can swim. Um, Yes. Well, I’ve never seen a black person swim. Well, if we have to measure the things that people can do based on what you’ve seen, and you’re a sophomore, this is not how the world works.
[00:12:58] Amelia Ransom: Right? And so you’re [00:13:00] constantly confronted with this notion. Oh, I didn’t know black people wore makeup. Okay. Again, that’s fine. These are the types of things you learn in college about people. So that’s not bad, but it’s this notion of, well, then they don’t because I don’t know it to be true. That can’t be true.
[00:13:16] Amelia Ransom: Okay. I don’t, or because I don’t have personal experience with it, it can’t be true. Where my mother used to tell us all the time, experience is a fool’s wisdom. It gives the test first and then the lesson, meaning you can learn from other people. You don’t have to have experience or witness everything to know that it’s true.
[00:13:34] Amelia Ransom: And so that was, that was a big eye opener for me. Like, I didn’t know I didn’t know like black stereotypes. I didn’t know black stereotypes about like black people being lazy and like people don’t work hard. And I’d never heard those things. I’m like, what do you mean? Lazy? Every black person I know has a job.
[00:13:50] Mark Wright: And your dad had
[00:13:51] Amelia Ransom: My father had three of them. Yes. So what, where did you, I don’t know. There was no one in my neighborhood who would have fit that [00:14:00] description. So I didn’t understand that. Right. I didn’t understand when I said to a professor, I had to take a Jesus the Christ class and they asked what did Jesus look like?
[00:14:11] Amelia Ransom: We were just having a conversation and I was like, I don’t know, sometimes I feel like he looks a little bit like my dad and everybody in the class laughed. And I was like, I don’t, I’m not sure why that was funny. Is it funny because I think my dad is God? Like, is that funny? Or is it, they just, but they never, the concept of like, he could look like what they imagined my father would look like.
[00:14:30] Amelia Ransom: It
[00:14:31] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:14:31] Amelia Ransom: was not a thing. And I didn’t understand. I, when I tell you I literally didn’t understand it, I literally didn’t understand it.
[00:14:38] Mark Wright: Yeah. These are kids who grew up with the blue eyed Jesus picture on the wall.
[00:14:42] Amelia Ransom: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:14:44] Mark Wright: mean, Jesus was most definitely brown. I would imagine from the
[00:14:48] Amelia Ransom: Yes. Yes. And like if you need him to look like that in your mind, okay. And I can have him look like what I want to in my mind too. And we’re all okay. Right. Like, [00:15:00] I don’t, If, but if my faith is incumbent upon me believing that he looked like you, that’s a different story, right? That’s a different level of centering yourself versus who cares what she thinks he looks like. What’s the big deal? Like, I don’t really care how you envision him in your mind. As long as you don’t try to care about how I envision him in mine.
[00:15:23] Mark Wright: What I didn’t understand, Amelia. Until I spent significant time with friends of color and specifically African American friends is that the act of having to re explain over and over and over These stereotypes and what, what they think is the cultural norm of, of your people.
[00:15:44] Mark Wright: I didn’t realize how exhausting my friends, were and got after having, I mean, I, I can’t, it just kind of. Makes me hurt just to hear that one story. But when white people, [00:16:00] I don’t think have any clue how exhausting it is to be a person of color and to be so misunderstood and to have to explain and explain and explain and explain.
[00:16:11] Mark Wright:, can you address that?
[00:16:12] Amelia Ransom: I think so many of us are like, we’re done with the explaining, right? Because I, we were over explaining when Google was not a thing. And now I’m like, Google is a thing. And so I don’t think I’m going to be over explaining this. But you’re right in that it’s someone who has an immigrant background being asked, where are you really from?
[00:16:35] Amelia Ransom: It’s someone who is biracial, like my younger brothers are being asked, what are you really? It’s, you know, Oh, I’m from Los Angeles. Where are you from? South central Los Angeles. And people not knowing what to do next. Like when I say that at parties, people literally don’t know what to do next.
[00:16:52] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Amelia Ransom: And they either, like, say something to the person next to them, like, Oh, we should see if there’s more wine.
[00:16:58] Amelia Ransom: Because they have no idea what to make of [00:17:00] it. Because what has happened, from my perspective, what has happened is, I either fit the mold or I don’t. So they’ve spent the last 20 minutes talking with me. And they’re like, Gosh, she seems really cool. I really like her. We probably have a lot in common. And then they ask me where I’m from and I say South central Los Angeles, and suddenly they don’t know whether they do have something in common with me, or they don’t.
[00:17:24] Mark Wright: Because it doesn’t fit their stereotype.
[00:17:25] Amelia Ransom: Doesn’t fit the stereotype.
[00:17:27] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:17:27] Amelia Ransom: Or maybe it does and I’ve been fooling them this whole time, right? Like I’ve been catfishing them this whole time. And then all of a sudden I’m from this place that they have a notion of in their mind that no longer makes sense. Right? But I think people should know this is what racism does.
[00:17:44] Amelia Ransom: Racism, if you’re ever looking for racism or sexism or anything else, I can help you find it. It’s, it won’t be hard. It will be the thing that doesn’t make sense. Right? So if you think, Oh, well, you know, she probably [00:18:00] got into school because you know, she’s black and that’s how she got into school. Okay. And then it’s, well, you should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go to a good school.
[00:18:09] Amelia Ransom: Okay. Well I did, but then I only got there because pick a side. These are the things that don’t make sense, right? This is how you find out whether something is racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever it is. This is how you identify it. You have to make it make sense. And when it can’t, when it cannot follow a line of logic, you got to pause and ask yourself why it doesn’t follow a line of logic, because racism is circular.
[00:18:35] Amelia Ransom: It has no line to follow. Racism says. I don’t think Black people are clean, but also Black people come clean my house. Racism says, I don’t think they’re very smart, but also raise my children. Like, it can’t say these multiple things and make sense. So that’s how I often tell people, if you want to know whether it is or not, people sometimes ask like, do you think this thing was racist?
[00:18:59] Amelia Ransom: Okay, well, let’s, [00:19:00] unpack it. Let’s see if it follows a line of logic. If you say, Oh, this person didn’t get, you know, they got a 1. 6 grade point average and they ended up at Yale. Well, maybe I can’t make that one make sense. Well, maybe legacy will make it make sense, but that’s a different topic for a different day, right?
[00:19:16] Amelia Ransom: That follows a line of logic that you would be confused by that. But most things you can logic them out. If you can’t start looking for other reasons.
[00:19:26] Mark Wright: I think when we spoke recently, Amelia, you said another thing that doesn’t make sense. Most valedictorians in high school and college are girls and women, which says to those groups that these are leaders. These are leaders in our group. Yet when you crunch the numbers and ask how many CEOs in the Fortune 500 are women, I think it’s fewer than 1 in 10.
[00:19:49] Mark Wright: It’s, it’s, it’s a crazy low number.
[00:19:52] Amelia Ransom: Yes. I think there are two now as of this recording, I think. Okay.
[00:19:56] Mark Wright: seriously,
[00:19:57] Amelia Ransom: Yeah,
[00:19:58] Mark Wright: I just think that’s a brilliant [00:20:00] definition, working definition, of what racism really looks like.
[00:20:04] Amelia Ransom: right. It’s, you know, you would think these are the people that we would be looking for. Let’s see. I just looked at this stat. 10. 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies were, are led by female CEOs. This is as of June, 2023.
[00:20:21] Mark Wright: Yeah. So it’s like one in one in 10. That’s
[00:20:23] Amelia Ransom: one in 10. You’re right. You were right. Look at that. I love that. You were, you have the stat right there.
[00:20:28] Mark Wright: Well, it’s, you know, we’ve talked about this. I believe in any. Discipline, the numbers will tell you what the truth is, whether it’s members of the US Senate or CEOs in Fortune 500 companies or, you know, just fill in the blank.,
[00:20:44] Amelia Ransom: That we still have a country that has not had a female president.
[00:20:47] Mark Wright: right. And we’re how old now, which
[00:20:49] Amelia Ransom: Right. Do we believe that the providence of leadership rests only in men?
[00:20:54] Amelia Ransom: Because we are, I, and I really believe this. We are, we are all worse [00:21:00] off because of that. We are all harming ourselves because if we think that half of a society is unfit to lead the country, we’ve got a bigger problem because we have to do all of the work then with 50 percent capacity. And so this just isn’t going to do it.
[00:21:21] Amelia Ransom: And we have, and then combine that with what you’re saying, we have women and girls at the top of their game, high school, college, and then it falls off. And we’re saying, but not, CEO though. And I don’t think, for, I know someone’s thinking this, that can’t be explained away by the women who choose to lead the workforce to have children.
[00:21:40] Amelia Ransom: It isn’t explained by that because there are still plenty of women here.
[00:21:44] Mark Wright: You spent more than a dozen years at Nordstrom. And you really worked across a spectrum of jobs there, store manager, diversity affairs, all the way up to director of talent. What was your time like at Nordstrom when it came to just [00:22:00] your development and your understanding of the business world?
[00:22:03] Amelia Ransom: Nordstrom was great. I actually spent almost 30 years there. I was there for 26 years. And well, you, you have that because I think on my LinkedIn profile, I didn’t go back all the way to, yeah, it just has, I was there. Yeah. I was at Nordstrom nearly 30 years and man, I can tell you there was not a better training ground.
[00:22:24] Amelia Ransom: I learned so much., I had the opportunity to move lots of places, get to know other people, beat the business. Be in diversity, lead diversity for the company, lead the team of people who let our early in career work. It was a fascinating, company. It, I think it has the strongest culture of any company that I’ve ever experienced or know anything about.
[00:22:48] Amelia Ransom: It’s got a very strong culture and that is because, you know, the Nordstrom family is still very much involved with it, but it was also a place to test and try new things. [00:23:00] It was the place where somebody would say to you, Hey, you want to try this thing? And you’re like, I have no idea how to do that job.
[00:23:06] Amelia Ransom: Guess I’m going to go figure it out., and that was fantastic, right? You trusted people that got results. You wanted them to go try other things in the business so that they could be a really well rounded leader. And I think that’s really how we have to think about leadership. What makes sense for the person, what makes sense for the business and what makes sense for the teams.
[00:23:26] Amelia Ransom: But if we don’t think about it as that three legged stool, we’ll always be over weighting one way or the other.
[00:23:33] Mark Wright: I’m curious about the diversity affairs rule. I think you started that in 2006. This is like 14 years before the death of George Floyd. So this company is dedicating itself to understanding DEI from a very early state. How does that work when a company says we care about this? That’s one thing. But then how do you implement that in a way that, [00:24:00] that proves it?
[00:24:00] Mark Wright: BEATS
[00:24:02] Amelia Ransom: I think a couple of ways. You, as a business, you have to make a decision that we want to integrate this into the way that we work. Not that we want it to be an add on or a bolt on over here, right? On the side that we just sort of dust off when we need it. How do we really integrate that into the ways of working?
[00:24:22] Amelia Ransom: I had great relationships when I was leading, diversity for the company. I had come off leading diversity for a region. I was on the East Coast for several years leading diversity as well. So I’d come off that job and really had understood what it takes to make it happen in the store at that level and then come to lead it for the company.
[00:24:41] Amelia Ransom: You’ve got to really figure out where are we trying to do business? How are we trying to do business? And who do we want to be, right? When they write the book and, you know, many books have been written about Nordstrom, but when they write the book about it, what do we want our legacy to be about people?
[00:24:59] Amelia Ransom: [00:25:00] And Nordstrom enjoys a strong, healthy relationship with its people. So it, you know, the organization wanted to have that, but that was a motivating and driving factor for it. Because when I started on the East coast, I moved from LA to Washington, DC in 1994. And started working in diversity in 98 plus or minus a year.
[00:25:23] Amelia Ransom: We were growing a lot on the East Coast at that time, but that’s not the Northwest, right? You want to move to places like Georgia and Florida and North Carolina. That culture is very different than the Pacific Northwest culture. And so how do you take this place and move it to another part of the country where people in some cases have never heard of it?
[00:25:46] Amelia Ransom: Like we would open stores or go to talk about Nordstrom stores and people would ask us questions like, well, what do you do? What do you sell? Like, people would come in and ask, like, where the refrigerators were, right? Because they, they had no idea who we were, so you have to [00:26:00] introduce yourself to a whole new community.
[00:26:02] Amelia Ransom: But you also have to understand the history of the community you’re going into, right? These are not, these are places. that have the history of not only having its Native people stripped from its lands, but also the enslaved people and the history of the enslaved people who are there that is very different than how it shows up in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:26:27] Amelia Ransom: And so helping the company understand that difference, that cultural difference, Because again, we don’t have the internet bringing all things together and all like that. You have to kind of throw that into the conversation. We don’t have that. We have real people having experiences, right? After 9 11, where we had great customers who were showing up saying, how can we help?
[00:26:50] Amelia Ransom: How can we support a community of people doing that? But you also have customers that are tearing hijabs off people and telling them to go home. And, you know, how do you [00:27:00] ensure the safety of those folks? It’s just different. Right. So that was, you know, diversity work there in that time was really about helping this company who was growing a lot, understand how to grow in these places, how to grow in Florida, how to grow in Georgia, how to grow in North Carolina.
[00:27:19] Amelia Ransom: How do you do that and preserve this Nordstrom culture that is so great and so strong in a very new place where folks are like, we have no idea what you’re talking about. That was different and that we came to honor. The people and the teams, right? We would go, one of the first things we would do at Nordstrom when we broke ground on a new place.
[00:27:39] Amelia Ransom: One of the very 1st places that we introduced ourselves. Was through something that my team led, which was called Project Preview, and we gave the community an opportunity to come in and understand what kind of store we were building. What was it going to look like? And the kinds of people that we would need to help us build it.
[00:27:58] Amelia Ransom: And give them the opportunity [00:28:00] to bid on those jobs. Specifically for women and minority owned businesses. We want you to be part of building this store. So full circle. I become a store manager and maybe I don’t know every few months. I had a guy that would come in and bring people because he had done work in the store.
[00:28:21] Amelia Ransom: He had like, I can’t remember now if he’d done the drywall or what he had done. I don’t remember now, but he would bring people in to show them that this was his store because he had been part of building this store. I don’t think the man ever bought a single thing from there, but it was his store because he’d been part of bringing it to this community.
[00:28:39] Amelia Ransom: That’s the connection. That’s the difference.
[00:28:42] Mark Wright: That has so many more levels than I think the average person realizes because you’re talking about the people who build the store. The people who staff the store, the people who are vendors and create goods for the store, the customer base. All of [00:29:00] that is colored for better or worse by the location, right?
[00:29:06] Mark Wright: By the society where you are., and that has to be taken into account at each of those levels. Right.
[00:29:12] Amelia Ransom: That’s right.
[00:29:14] Mark Wright: What was the biggest thing that you learned, Amelia, about DEI during your time at Nordstrom, and leading that effort there? Hmm.
[00:29:22] Amelia Ransom: Oh, what is the biggest thing I learned? I mean, it was a lot of years, so I can tell you I learned a lot of things, but I think I would distill it to a couple of things. One, and I truly believe this. You can’t, this is, you know, I love a good quote, Mark. To know me is to know that I absolutely, positively love very few things more than I love a good quote. And so I would say one of the things that I learned there was, we have to become better to people and not think that we’re going to become better than people. And so to me, that means if we can show up [00:30:00] in a servant attitude kind of way, which is really all the Nordstrom family does, this is how they show up. If we can take that to what it means to truly include people.
[00:30:10] Amelia Ransom: Then we have to focus on redesigning whatever we might have if we need to, or designing it with people in mind that we expect to use it, not telling them how we want you to use it, right? So how, what is the community? What should a community look like here? What should the customer experience look like here?
[00:30:30] Amelia Ransom: So we have to hold very close to our values and hold very loosely our practices. So if you think about Nordstrom specifically, they have a strong culture of giving great customer service, right? If you talk to somebody about Nordstrom, they’ll tell you all about the customer service. 100 percent right.
[00:30:50] Amelia Ransom: But the practice of how you give customer service has to evolve, right? When I was working there, it was like a whole high touch experience and how can you like all of it, [00:31:00] which is still, if you want that, that’s still there for you. But there is now what has happened is the speed has come in as customer service.
[00:31:08] Amelia Ransom: How do I get in and get out? If I want to win the dinner table tonight, I want you Mark, to be able to go home and say, I went to Nordstrom, I got exactly what I needed. I was out in 15 minutes. It was fantastic. I will win the dinner table tonight. But if you say, Oh my gosh, the person tried to show me 87 things that I didn’t want.
[00:31:27] Amelia Ransom: And it just took forever. And they weren’t listening, but I’m losing the dinner table. Like I’m losing it. And so I would always say, I mean, I’m not alone in this, but we think about it. Like, how do I win the dinner table? So that’s how it changes. So the practice, of service needs to change, but the value of service needs to stay the same.
[00:31:44] Amelia Ransom: So the value that you place on your employee and how you include them and what that looks like, that value has to remain strong. How you do that is going to change. And it must change. Because the expectations of teams change. Who do you want to be? Is it [00:32:00] just about representation? Well, you can get to representation without ever really including people, right?
[00:32:05] Amelia Ransom: So how do I make sure you are not just at the table, but you have helped create the table? How do I hear your voice and incorporate that voice? Like I can remember Blake Nordstrom calling me and he’d be in a store and call me and say, Hey, I had, I talked to this employee and they said this, and I think we should change it. That’s how you, like, you get there because you’re able to have that two way conversation and really lead. Because I don’t think anybody with the last name Norsham ever thought they were going to become better than someone. They wanted to become better to people. And you’ll do whatever it takes to do that.
[00:32:42] Amelia Ransom: You’ll change yourself. You can’t want to be part of a movement and not actually move. We, we’re all going to have to change ourselves. BEATS WORKING And I think that is an important thing. And then I think the last thing that I’ve learned in doing DEI work specifically at Nordstrom is know [00:33:00] who your audience is.
[00:33:01] Amelia Ransom: Like, there are always going to be people on the fringes that are not going to want to do DEI work. I’m not talking to you, right? You’ll make your own choice about whether this is going to be the right company for you or not. I don’t have to work hard to convince you of that. I know where we’re going and what we’re doing because I know it’s deeply connected to our outcomes.
[00:33:19] Amelia Ransom: Got it. Whether you want to be part of that or not is up to you. And I’m not going to go through multiple spin cycles trying to convince you that this is good for you if you decide that it’s not. I don’t know. Unpopular opinion maybe. It’s possible that’s an unpopular opinion.
[00:33:40] Mark Wright: to talk how you got to Seattle and also what DEI looks like in quote unquote liberal cities.
[00:33:47] Amelia Ransom: Oh, Mark.
[00:33:49] Mark Wright: Can of worms, about to be opened.
[00:33:53] Amelia Ransom: Can of Worms about to be open because liberal cities think that they’re better than conservative cities. They [00:34:00] really do. And it shows up in these really self righteous kinds of ways. Well, we’re not that city, right? At least Seattle’s not fill in the blank city that you don’t like, that’s in conservative state.
[00:34:15] Amelia Ransom: We’re not them. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You’re just them with some subtleties mixed in, but you are still them, right? You, I don’t, I don’t know how we’re not them. I had a conversation with a woman that I’d gotten to know fairly well. And we, you know, understood that we had a similar politic and we had some similar things in common.
[00:34:37] Amelia Ransom: And we started talking about education. And I’ll never forget, she put her hand up and she said, Oh, my politics stop at my child. And I thought, now that is an interesting statement. That’s where they stop. And she said, yes, she says, well, I want to make sure my, my, child school is diverse or that he has some diverse friends is what she labeled them as diverse And [00:35:00] I said, well, what do you want for the friends?
[00:35:02] Amelia Ransom: Nothing. She wanted them in service of her child. So there’s a difference between, I want my child to have exposure to these things and I want equal education for all children. Those are two different statements. She thought she was saying the latter. She was not. She was saying the former. I would like for my child to have like one Asian friend and one Black friend and one, you know, trans friend and one da da da.
[00:35:27] Amelia Ransom: Like she was trying to curate around her child, not curate an experience. Where all children are elevated. Because you can’t want to advantage your child and want equal education at the same time. You cannot want both of those things. It’s just not possible. And so that’s like an uncomfortable truth you’re going to have to sit with.
[00:35:49] Amelia Ransom: Like, I don’t know who doesn’t want to advantage their child. My parents wanted to advantage me. They put 45 minutes every day. Again, it’s, I don’t have a judgment here. I just [00:36:00] have a statement that is, this is a truth. I’m not judging what you do, but the fact that she thought she was saying one thing and really wasn’t is just something we have to deal with. Like, I do absolutely think that my parents were trying to advantage me because they did not know what else to do, but those are the ways in which it shows up. The ways in which I, uh, used to live in a condominium downtown, and, I was the Black person that owned a condominium in this building, and, um, We would have these building meetings and they would talk about, oh, we have, you know, to deal with the, you know, there was an encampment down the street from us. Well, it’s loud. Did you move downtown for quiet? We live downtown. There’s bars all around us. You didn’t come here for quiet. So what’s the problem with loud? Well, you know, I think there’s activity. Again, we live downtown. This encampment is not the problem. I promise you this encampment is not it. And also I could see it from my window [00:37:00] and I said, well, I’ve seen people sweeping up and cleaning, literally cleaning.
[00:37:03] Amelia Ransom: Well, I saw a man like, you know, using the bathroom. Were you going to let him in your house? Where did you expect him to go? Like we unpack it for me because I don’t know what you expected to happen here. These are our neighbors, but we don’t want to deal with that. We want to think that we’re so liberal.
[00:37:23] Amelia Ransom: You know, particularly don’t get me started when somebody tells me about King County. This is like, this is the quickest way to get to an argument. You want to tell me about, well, our counties, I have multiple people have told me this. This county is the only county named for Martin Luther King. That’s true.
[00:37:36] Amelia Ransom: You renamed it for Martin Luther King though. No, you actually re, like, there’s a whole story there. Google it. We don’t have time. But. There’s a self righteousness when people say it sometimes. I want the Seattle that I think my husband grew up in. He talks about this inclusive Seattle, he’s got friends from all walks of life.
[00:37:54] Amelia Ransom: That’s not the Seattle I moved to. At all. The Seattle I moved to, I, you [00:38:00] know, got the police called on me when I was house sitting for a neighbor. These are different Seattles.
[00:38:04] Mark Wright: Because you looked quote unquote suspicious.
[00:38:07] Amelia Ransom: I did! I did, with the key and the alarm code, and all of that. I looked very suspicious. It was very suspicious as I walked back to my home, which was next door. Right. And like, I know, you know me because I’m the black person that lives here. I know, you know me, but you just, you weren’t looking, you didn’t know.
[00:38:27] Amelia Ransom: I listen, I can’t account for these things. But yes, liberal cities love to think themselves better than conservative cities. And I’m not altogether convinced that’s true. I did. I went
[00:38:39] Mark Wright: you work for Nordstrom when you came to Seattle? Okay. And how did you make the transition from Nordstrom to what was next?
[00:38:52] Amelia Ransom: Which is a tech company based in Pioneer Square. Well, they’re based in, I think they were based in Bainbridge originally., but by the [00:39:00] time I started working for them, they were in Pioneer Square. And I was not sure I was going to go to tech. Like this was not a thing I thought was going to happen. Um, but I knew I was ready for something different.
[00:39:14] Amelia Ransom: And I wanted to try something different before I retired. I thought like I’ve been here 26 years. I want to try something different, have a different experience. And, I thought I was going to go the nonprofit route and I had interviewed for and had actually gotten an offer to run a local nonprofit.
[00:39:29] Amelia Ransom: And, at the same time, Avalara swoops in and I thought, tech, this is interesting tax compliance. What do y’all do again? Why do you want to hire me? I have no experience here. But really what they were looking for is someone who had experience who could come in and help them build, the DEI muscle that they did not have.
[00:39:47] Amelia Ransom: And so that was really interesting to me. Like, how do you go build it a place that is growing and is on, you know, this really great growth trajectory. So that was really, that was interesting and [00:40:00] compelling in a way, like, could I do that? How would I help a company younger? Like this is a teenage company.
[00:40:07] Amelia Ransom: How will I help them build this into their DNA so that as they grow, it’s already there? And so that’s what I did. I was there for about three years and I led employee engagement and diversity and helped them put together the first DEI practice that they’d had in the organization. It was really fun.
[00:40:26] Mark Wright: If you were going to consult one on one a high level executive at a company here in the Northwest. about DEI. Where, where would you start? And how would you know that it was being done the right way?
[00:40:41] Amelia Ransom: I would first ask them to tell me where they think they are on a spectrum. So there’s everything from keep my name out of a newspaper. I just don’t want any bad press to I would like to be innovative in the space, right? What I call the sharp edge of the knife. I want to be innovative. I would first ask them to plot out [00:41:00] where they want to be because either of those extremes is probably not the best place to start.
[00:41:07] Amelia Ransom: Like if you’re just starting, you’re not probably going to be innovative in this space. To begin with, you’ve got to get some muscle, right? You need some rounds of that. But if you’re also like, just keep my name out of the paper, you aren’t going to do, you’re not going to sustain this. That’s the equivalent of somebody saying, I just want to wear these jeans this weekend. And so I’m going to skip three meals and like, eat a salad. So I can fit into my jeans this weekend. That is not the same as someone who says, I want to be fit and better. I want to be healthier. That’s those aren’t the same people, right? They can look like the same people on the surface, but they’re not the same person.
[00:41:42] Amelia Ransom: So first let’s map it out. What I asked the CEO at Avalara when I was interviewing was when they write the, when they write the book on you, what do you want the chapter on DEI to say? What would you want to have done? Talk to me as if this is five years from now or 10 years from now. [00:42:00] Tell me what they would say about you.
[00:42:02] Amelia Ransom: And, you know, I remember he just kind of sat there for a second. He’s like, what should I want to say? And I was like, and he’s a really, really smart guy. And so we had a great conversation about it, but that’s where I would start. I would start with like, let’s get you a little bit uncomfortable first. Cause if I do, then you’ll probably actually tell me the truth. about why it is you’re doing this, what you want to accomplish, and whether or not that means you need DEI.
[00:42:27] Amelia Ransom: If you just don’t want to be in the news after the murders of George Floyd, and y’all threw up a whole DEI practice that you have since torn down, let’s be clear. You didn’t need to start one in the first place. You weren’t ready for it. You were just trying to get into your jeans because they were too tight that weekend.
[00:42:44] Mark Wright: That’s a
[00:42:44] Amelia Ransom: You weren’t actually trying to be more fit.
[00:42:48] Mark Wright: How do you know, Amelia, when a company’s doing it right? Because
[00:42:52] Amelia Ransom: getting it wrong.
[00:42:53] Mark Wright: yeah, I
[00:42:54] Amelia Ransom: when they’re getting it right, they’re getting it wrong sometimes and they’re still going.
[00:42:57] Mark Wright: but like as a consumer, [00:43:00] as an everyday citizen, this is what I’m most curious about. How do we know as people outside these companies that they’re getting it right?
[00:43:10] Amelia Ransom: You ever watch a commercial at like some night when you can’t sleep and it’s three o’clock in the morning and you see the commercial for like weight loss pill, take this pill, dah, dah, dah. And you think that is too good to be true. That’s how you know, cause it doesn’t make sense. It can’t possibly work like that when you’re just getting the commercial and the commercial just sounds like, really?
[00:43:36] Amelia Ransom: You did all that in that little pill. That’s how, you know,
[00:43:40] Mark Wright: And if you’re inside of a company, how do I know my company is getting it right?
[00:43:46] Amelia Ransom: again, because there’s sometimes getting it wrong, but they’re listening and taking feedback and trying to be better.
[00:43:51] Mark Wright: Hmm.
[00:43:52] Amelia Ransom: You should not have an expectation that that is going to happen overnight. Nothing good does, but you should have an [00:44:00] expectation that you can be heard and that when needed change can be made, but sustainable change, not just in the moment.
[00:44:09] Amelia Ransom: Not just slapped up on the wall, but real change rooted in your company’s principles. That’s how you know. You don’t know because like, Oh, this person said the wrong thing. That’s fine. Let’s correct them. Let’s move on. But you could know because when you gave the person feedback about what they said, they thanked you and they made an effort to be better the next time.
[00:44:33] Amelia Ransom: That’s how.
[00:44:34] Mark Wright: I’d like to drill down a little bit more on that
[00:44:37] Amelia Ransom: Yeah.
[00:44:38] Mark Wright: and what those conversations look and sound like between a black coworker, a white coworker, Asian coworker. When you start to have those discussions about diversity, I think a lot of white people are terrified of making a mistake and terrified of offending someone.
[00:44:59] Mark Wright: And so they don’t talk [00:45:00] about it. And so how they initiate, I think would be something that if you shared here that, that people could really take to heart. Like what advice? I mean, you’ve worked within these big companies where the value comes when we understand that person in the cubicle next to us or at the cash register next to us.
[00:45:21] Mark Wright: Right.
[00:45:21] Amelia Ransom: If you want to have a friend and know something about a friend or a colleague, then make a sincere effort to know that person. Not just tell me your trauma stories so that I can then, like, win the cocktail party I’m going to tonight. Like, don’t re traumatize people for your benefit. If you’re going to befriend someone, like if I really, if you really want to know the person next to you, then just get to know the person next to you, right?
[00:45:50] Amelia Ransom: In the same way that you get to know any other person next to you. If you want to go deeper, then I need to understand what you’re willing to put into it [00:46:00] before I put into it, right? This is the conversation that I sometimes have where I say, if I call you, Mark, and I say, Mark, can you come pick me up?
[00:46:08] Amelia Ransom: What is your first question to me?
[00:46:10] Mark Wright: I’m going to say, where are you?
[00:46:12] Amelia Ransom: Right. Where are you? Right. If I say, Mark, I’m in Istanbul and you’re like, I am unsure why you called me knowing that I’m most likely not in Istanbul, right? So what do I need to do if I really want you to help me? I need to get closer to you. So maybe I say, okay, I’m going to get on a flight and I’m going to land at SeaTac at this time.
[00:46:39] Amelia Ransom: And then you might say, Oh, okay. You want me to get you from the airport in Seattle? Oh, okay. Okay. I might, it still might be an inconvenience. It still might be like, Oh, I got to like switch the meetings around or do something different, but I’d be willing to help you because you are moving closer to me. That’s the same thing in any other relationship. I need to know you’re moving [00:47:00] closer to me. And this is not just usury because so often people from marginalized groups share their stories. They tell you what it’s like to be a woman in the organization. They tell you what it’s like to be a person of color.
[00:47:13] Amelia Ransom: They tell you what it’s like to be a person with a disability. And you go, Oh man, that is so hard. And then like, you’re done, you’re done. So if you show that you’re moving closer and say, you know, I’ve really been working on showing up better as a colleague, or I’ve really been working at showing up better in meetings.
[00:47:33] Amelia Ransom: Here’s what I’m trying to do. Then we have a place to go, but not just tell me all the things. No, why would I do that? Because neither of us is going to be better off in that scenario.
[00:47:45] Mark Wright: Yeah, that feels very transactional. Doesn’t it? Yeah.
[00:47:55] Amelia Ransom: cartoon that they print every fall where Lucy has the football and she’s [00:48:00] convincing Charlie Brown to run up and kick the ball. And she promises this time she’s not going to take the ball back. I read that every fall and every fall, I’m like, Charlie Brown, don’t fall for it.
[00:48:09] Amelia Ransom: Just don’t do it, Charlie Brown. She’s going to take the ball. This is what she does. And every year there he goes. And then I look at Lucy at the end. I’m like, Lucy, why do you keep doing that to him? Right. But it’s that, that’s not a relationship. Right. That’s, that’s gaslighting in a way. She convinces him, she’s going to be better this time.
[00:48:32] Amelia Ransom: And frankly it’s what a lot of white people did in 2020. They convinced us they were going to be better. They convinced us they all wanted to show up and change and be different. And that just didn’t happen. It just, not in the longterm,
[00:48:47] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:48:47] Amelia Ransom: It just, it didn’t happen that way. And so that’s, I tell people, how are you going to show up in the relationship?
[00:48:53] Amelia Ransom: will absolutely tell me how I can show up in the relationship. And is it really a relationship, right? When [00:49:00] women called up and said, do you want to go to the women’s March? No, I don’t want to go to the women’s March. No, you think I want to put that knitted hat on my head? And I do not because I asked you where you were when Trayvon Martin was killed, I asked you where you were and did you want, and you weren’t there, right?
[00:49:18] Amelia Ransom: When Breonna Taylor was, you weren’t, you weren’t there. You were outraged and then you kept scrolling. But again, you can’t want to be part of a movement if you don’t move.
[00:49:27] Mark Wright: As we kind of start to wrap things up here, Amelia, I’d like to talk about your desire to create a podcast dedicated to DEI, and one that creates a discussion that isn’t taking place today. And I’d love to know what frustrates you most about the way DEI is being discussed and implemented in companies in America today, and what do you want to change through just a really honest, unvarnished, approach through [00:50:00] a podcast?
[00:50:01] Amelia Ransom: I want us to, prioritize being well over looking good. And we cannot be well unless we’re having real conversations about what’s happening. Too much of the conversation around DEI right now is being co opted by people who are calling it didn’t earn it and why do we have to do this and banning books and all of this. I feel very strongly rooted in the outcomes that DEI can have organizationally. I’m not so passionate quote unquote about DEI as we talked about, like I truly have tried to stop doing this work 100 times. But I’m very committed to what I believe it can bring if we center the people who need to be centered.
[00:50:48] Amelia Ransom: But as long as we center the comfort of those in the majority, specifically white men, we aren’t moving anywhere. So how do we have the right dialogue, an honest [00:51:00] dialogue, about what is really happening, what it takes to change, right? Like things like CRT, remember when CRT was big in the news, things like CRT are only problematic because they don’t center whiteness. CRT centers otherness. It centers blackness, right? Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, who gave us intersectionality, that’s only problematic because it centers, problematic for other people because it centers marginalized people. It centers black women specifically. So that can be problematic for people, but we’re never moving anywhere unless we do.
[00:51:35] Amelia Ransom: We’re not going to get where we want to go unless we can do that. Right? These are the things I call, we have thought of diversity as the same thing. as equal opportunity, right, for all people. And I think if we really want to get to equity, if we really want to get to do we provide things that people need when they need them and how they need them, that’s a game changer.[00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Amelia Ransom: We all win, but it’s not, easy to get there because we’re going to have to put other things down to get there. We’re going to have to actually change. in order to get where we want to go, provided that’s where we want to go. But we will never do that having commercials about DEI. We will never do it about having like fluffy words and you know, Oh, we’re committed to women.
[00:52:25] Amelia Ransom: We love women. And we like, you know, gave a donation. Like we’ll never get there doing that.
[00:52:30] Mark Wright: I feel like most of our learning in any discipline in life happens when we make a mistake. And I think we’re afraid to make a mistake in this space, aren’t we?
[00:52:42] Amelia Ransom: We are afraid to make a mistake, but there is no other way around it.
[00:52:46] Mark Wright: Yeah.
[00:52:46] Amelia Ransom: I mean, if you learn to ride a bike or you learn to walk or you learn to do anything, there’s no way you learned that without taking a tumble. There’s no way you learned it. And it’s embarrassing. And you’re like, Oh my gosh, I skinned my [00:53:00] knee or whatever happened.
[00:53:01] Amelia Ransom: And you were okay. You’re most of us are fine, but we are so afraid to get it wrong that we aren’t even trying to get it right. We have abandoned the notion of getting it right, and we have chosen feeling good over being better, right? This is the statement my husband says all the time. I can help you feel better, or I can help you be better, but I don’t do both.
[00:53:21] Amelia Ransom: Pick a side. And I want to say that to our community. I can help you feel better, or I can help you be better, but I am committed to helping you be better. I am not committed to helping you feel better. But as it turns out, being better, does make you feel better. So let’s be better. Let’s not just pretend like we’re better, right?
[00:53:43] Amelia Ransom: Rather than like skipping three meals so that our genes can fit. I don’t know. Like if, as for me, I just need to put down the potato chips. Like this is my problem. That’s what I need to do. Everybody needs to do something different, but we have [00:54:00] to reframe how we get there, right? This is what I call the problem of the ice cream.
[00:54:04] Amelia Ransom: BEATS WORKING So the problem of the ice cream is people want 31 flavors of ice cream and they want it today. You go, great. I can get you 31 flavors of ice cream, but then I bring it to you and it melts because you can only put two gallons in your freezer and you didn’t think about the environment you were going to bring the ice cream into.
[00:54:24] Amelia Ransom: And so when the ice cream melts, then you blame the ice cream. Like that doesn’t make sense. But we do this organizationally. We say, I want more X. Bring me more X. We get more X. And then we go, Oh, remember that time we tried to hire a woman and it didn’t work out. Hmm. I don’t think a woman would be a fit on this team. I don’t think that, that, you know, that person who, you know, has autism would be a fit on this team. I don’t think, well, you didn’t have the right environment. Don’t blame the person. That’s you. But that requires [00:55:00] us to change and invest in the environment rather than blaming the people who we tried to bring into the environment.
[00:55:08] Amelia Ransom: I want us to get to that level of conversation where we’re considering the environment.
[00:55:12] Mark Wright: Just one last question, and that is, I’d love your thoughts on our mission to redeem work. That is to make work better for everyone. When we really think about the value of DEI in the workplace, when everyone feels valued, when everyone feels like they have a seat at the table., it really feels like through the lens of redeeming work, this is so vitally important to every single business, isn’t it?
[00:55:38] Amelia Ransom: It is, if we, almost every business I know of wants to grow. How are you going to do that without including other people? How are you going to leverage that? Unless you think that divine providence of growing businesses and being smart at the, you know, in the Zoom meeting lies only in [00:56:00] cisgendered white men, we aren’t going to get there. And we’re going to leave so much on the table. I truly believe that the answers to some of our most intractable problems has already been here before. And that may sound kind of woo woo to people. But I really believe that the answers to things might lie in the body of a girl who was discouraged from taking math or in the body of a boy who’s from a neighborhood that I’m from or like, who didn’t have the same opportunities.
[00:56:29] Amelia Ransom: What if the answers are there? I don’t think if you got to the hospital tomorrow and they said, Oh, we really wish we had technology to do blah, blah, blah, but you know, it was created by a black person. You sure you want it? I don’t think you’d care.
[00:56:42] Mark Wright: LAUGHS
[00:56:43] Amelia Ransom: I really don’t. Like, I just don’t think care. As a survivor of a rare cancer, if someone had told me that anyone had the cure, please give it to me. We’re not allowing that to happen for us. We are literally holding ourselves back because we will not [00:57:00] include other people because including other people for some of us means de centering ourselves, re centering ourselves as a community and thinking about what’s best for all of us. That’s what it takes.
[00:57:13] Amelia Ransom: There’s nowhere, there’s no shortcut. There’s no pill at three o’clock in the morning that you’re going to buy. You have to just be better. There is no just feeling better. There is only being better.
[00:57:23] Mark Wright: Well, this has been so fun, Amelia. I look forward to hearing your podcast when it comes out and I’m glad that you haven’t been able to break up with TEI.
[00:57:36] Amelia Ransom: I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying. It’s just, it’s not happening. It is not happening, sir. But yes, I am., I’m looking forward. To, you know, bringing people together. This will not just be me, you know, droning on at people. This will definitely be hearing from folks I think are really doing sometimes the [00:58:00] Sisyphean work of trying to make progress in this space every day.
[00:58:03] Amelia Ransom: And I do want to remind people, I can promise you, No one would come for DEI if it didn’t work. They wouldn’t be happy to leave us alone to play with our blocks in the corner. But because I know we can make real change for people like me and for our greater community, because I know that works, we have to do it.
[00:58:25] Mark Wright: Amelia Ransom. This has been so much fun. I look forward to keeping in touch. Thank you so much.
[00:58:31] Amelia Ransom: Thanks, Mark. This has been a blast.