Month: June 2020

Everyone has the right to feel like they belong in their workplace. No one understands this better than Brittany Cole, an author, TEDx speaker, and inclusive leadership development consultant who helps organizations cultivate more inclusive cultures.

As a former sales, marketing, and DEI leader in the healthcare industry, Brittany has experienced how intentional leadership development increases colleague engagement, accelerates career achievements, and drives business results—in short, makes the workplace better for all. With this knowledge, Brittany founded Career Thrivers, an inclusive leadership development firm that provides targeted leadership development curriculum, strategic planning, and coaching to enhance equity in the workplace.

“Every experience is an opportunity for continuous improvement” is Brittany’s motto. Her aphorism on improvement is in line with Nashville Design Week’s theme this year: to Reshape design.

When discussing DEI strategy during NDW, what terms and statistics do you want the audience to be familiar with?

“Strategy” is the first term to understand. The Oxford dictionary defines a strategy as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” A typical business strategy spans at least three years with a very clear purpose, north star, and objectives. These components are also critical to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Research shows that taking a momentary, compliance-centered approach to DEI work isn’t sustainable or successful. Starting with a clear why (purpose) and where (vision) is important. Lastly, it’s helpful to understand what diversity, equity, and inclusion mean and the differences between the terms.

Please see some brief definitions below:

“Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is an act. Equity is in the stats.”

Diversity–
Simply means difference and includes visible (race, gender, etc.) and invisible (education, experience, etc.) differences that make up a person’s identity.

Inclusion–
Intentional action to incorporate and value difference.

Equity–
Distributing information and resources so that outcomes aren’t determined by the differences that exist.

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

Embracing discomfort and empathy are essential elements of communication. If your focus in the conversation is on making your point, perhaps there’s an opportunity to elevate your empathy. Empathy is about centering the other person—so my intention in the conversation is to understand and step into their mindset, feelings, and experiences. We are often trained to initiate hard conversations with “I” statements. Although this kind of preparation may be helpful in negotiations, etc. it can be an unproductive approach with emotionally charged conversations. Empathetic conversations don’t start with “I”; they start with inquiry. Be curious, and begin the conversation with a question to understand their point of view.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community? Recommendations can be in the form of articles, talks, books, movies, podcasts, and more. 

There are so many outstanding resources to tap into. Here are a few…

Books–

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in World Made for Whiteness
by Austin Channing Brown

The Memo: What Women of Color (and allies) Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table
by Minda Harts

How to Be an AntiRacist
by Ibram X. Kendi

Videos–

A Must Watch History of the Confederacy
from the ACLU

5 Essentials for Getting Started with Your DEI Strategy
from Career Thrivers

What Leaders Must Do Today to Address Systematic Racism
from Harvard Business Review

Podcasts–

1619 by New York Times

Code Switch by NPR

Seeing White by Scene On Radio

Career Thrivers by Brittany Cole

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

A powerful, emotionally intelligent conversation to ask yourself anytime you have thought about a person or group of people is to challenge your thought with, “Why do I think that?”

The second question to ask yourself is “What action am I taking to make my organization more inclusive?” Inclusion starts with “I”—it begins with yourself—and cultivating a culture where everyone can thrive takes all of us.
—

Follow Brittany on her LinkedIn account.

For LaKeithea Nicole Anderson, supporting BIPOC designers means bridging her two passions: community engagement and design. It all started with a childhood love of FUBU, the Black-owned brand that celebrates Black culture in all its creativity and power. That vision continues through LaKeithea’s PR agency, For Us. The Agency, in which she helps launch, establish, and grow Black-owned brands and talent.  She’s also the Community Engagement Coordinator for Nashville Community Education. Nashville Design Week reached out to LaKeithea for her insight into supporting BIPOC designers.

“To connect with BIPOC designers, you should show up to where they are.”

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

To truly engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers, you must open your platforms for BIPOC designers to showcase their work and expertise. Many times, BIPOC are asked to discuss trauma-related incidents and Diversity. All too often we end up being asked to showcase who we are when there is trauma involved in the Black Community or when audiences are asking for more transparency from the organizations and communities they are part of. Encourage your team to dig into the work of BIPOC as the thought leaders, creatives, and the educated designers they are.

Often, organizations say they “don’t know many designers of color.”

This is a disconnect that stems from two places: (1) Not putting forth the effort to safely include BIPOC into the spaces they occupy. (2) Not showing up to where BIPOC are.

If the spaces you are in don’t have the representation and diversity you desire, you need to change the spaces you are in. To connect with BIPOC designers, you should show up to where they are, go to their events and showcases to see their work.

Lastly, talk to your teams about how to support the BIPOC designers that are already within your organizations. Think about the opportunities and training they are being offered. Are you nurturing and supporting BIPOC that are already within reach, are you utilizing their expertise? Are they having to jump through hurdles for opportunities? If you have BIPOC in your spaces that have been there for years, ask yourself why they are still not at your tables to help make decisions?

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community?

The Black Experience in Graphic Design: 1968 and 2020

Boss Betty Newsletter

The fashion industry is notoriously racist. Here’s how to make it more inclusive.

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

What unconscious biases are you carrying, and how do those biases affect the way you connect with the BIPOC community?

When was the last time you have shown up for BIPOC community events to engage? How do you expect to diversify your brand if you are only in the same spaces?
—

Follow LaKeithea on her LinkedIn account.

Meet Pascale Sablan. You’ll be formally introduced during the [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE Nashville Design Week event. Pascale’s career kicked off in 2003 when she worked on the African Burial Ground National Monument, which marks the nation’s earliest and largest African burial ground thus far rediscovered in the United States.

For nearly eleven years, she has created sustainable and dynamic architectural designs all over the world, holding multiple leadership positions and receiving honors for her work, including the 2018 Pratt Alumni Achievement Award, the 2018 AIA Young Architects Award, and the NOMA Prize for Excellence in Design. She was also a Building Design+Construction 40 Under 40 honoree and was featured in the Council of Tall Building & Urban Habitat Research Paper—in the same company as the legendary architect, Zaha Hadid.

While working as a senior associate in New York City, Pascale founded Beyond the Built Environment, an architecture company created to address the unjust disparities in architecture. She’s given lectures at colleges and universities all over the U.S., as well as cultural institutions such as the United Nations and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Heritage and Culture.

As Nashville Design Week invests in reshaping design by helping to foster a more diverse design community, we contacted Pascale to help us set the tone for [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE and Nashville Design Week as a whole.

“First, I would like to challenge the idea of “uncomfortable conversations.” Uncomfortable for whom?

It is not about comfort; it’s about justice. If speaking about racism and oppression makes one feel uncomfortable, then that’s on that individual to self-reflect and understand why. ”

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

We begin by understanding the complex and multifaceted challenges that suppress BIPOC designers’ access to the profession. (Hint: It’s not just a lack of mentorship.)

We ask the BIPOC designers what they need and give them the opportunity for their experiences to guide the well-intentioned effort to help.

We create an action list with dates and deadlines, establish metrics of success, and invest in implementing the co-developed initiatives.

When discussing inequalities within the design industry, what terms and statistics do you want the NDW audience to be familiar with?

NCARB by the Numbers Report
Design Justice Demands

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

First, I would like to challenge the idea of “uncomfortable conversations.” Uncomfortable for whom?

The point is to say, framing it as such already sets a priority and sensitivity for some people in the conversation, a courtesy that often has not been extended to those who are being marginalized or oppressed. It is not about comfort; it’s about justice. If speaking about racism and oppression makes one feel uncomfortable, then that’s on that individual to self-reflect and understand why. My priority in the conversation is to be thoughtful, to learn, and to express my values and strategies for achieving a diverse and inclusive profession / built environment through just and equitable practices.

My tactics are to stay honest, to speak from a position of learner and leader, all while staying authentic to my concerns and beliefs.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community? Recommendations can be in the form of articles, talks, books, movies, podcasts, and more.

As we discuss the books that must be removed from the curriculum (in which the word “slavery” is being replaced with “unpaid laborer”), I have been looking to make a meaningful addition, a textbook for schools of designs. I am working toward publishing a Great Diverse Designers textbook and creating an online directory for business opportunities for the featured designers, leveraging the profiles that we’ve gathered. Due to the efforts of our Dismantling Injustice: Action 02 SAY IT LOUD – NOW Global Virtual Exhibition, our library now contains 395 profiles of Diverse Designers in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and from each inhabitable continent.  Here’s a link.

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

Acknowledging that architecture historically has been and continues to be used as a tool of oppression, name a project that oppresses a community, and identify the oppressed community. Name a project that heals and repairs a community, and identify the architect or firm.

—

Follow Pascale on her LinkedIn account .

Meet Valarie Franklin. Valarie is a senior architect at Moody Nolan with over 20 years of experience in the architectural world. Most notably, Valarie is a champion for reshaping design.

Valarie serves as president of the Nashville chapter of NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects), whose purpose is to minimize the effect of racism in the architectural community. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Civic Design Center, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for civic design visions and actionable change in communities to improve quality of life for all.

As Nashville Design Week invests in reshaping design by helping to foster a more diverse design community, we contacted Valarie via email to help us set the tone for [re]SHAPING THE DIALOGUE and Nashville Design Week as a whole.

How do we engage, encourage, and support the next generation of BIPOC designers?

To engage with the next generations, we must show them early in their childhood that a career in design is attainable and barrier-free to them. It’s important to understand that as a result of past segregation and redlining, our neighborhoods have had very real issues rebounding and truly integrating. These socioeconomic disparities continue to play out in our public education system. As a result, many BIPOC students don’t have the tools available to them during their formative years that would guide them into professional careers in design. If we want to grow the pool of BIPOC designers, it’s imperative that they’re engaged early and afforded the same opportunities as public schools in areas with higher property values. Actionable ways to engage these students are to sponsor or create initiatives such as hosting workshops, donating art supplies, and participating in career awareness days in our public school system as early as kindergarten.

When bringing a team into the schools, it’s important that the teams engaging with students are diverse. Diversity adds another level of confidence in the students and encourages them. When they see someone they identify with who is successful, it becomes more realistic that they, too, can find success. To effectively encourage the next generation, there has to be follow-up and a true effort to nurture students within the pipeline to professional careers. “Nurturing” in this case means keeping in contact with them after the initial engagement, and becoming loyal mentors and advisers throughout their education. Mentoring includes sharing programs and initiatives that the students can benefit from. If the right programs don’t exist, you help create them.

Mentors also have the opportunity to financially support mentees and/or make them aware of scholarships that they would be eligible for. Monetary support could look like scholarships, competitions that have a monetary prize, or gift cards to be spent on books that aid in or that are required for their education.

Attrition is a huge issue in the pipeline. Studies prove that many BIPOC college students don’t finish their degrees simply due to the financial strain that it causes themselves and their families. Much of this hardship is due to generational poverty—a direct result of historical racial disparities. The only path to eradication of generational poverty is through education. Higher education opens up opportunities over a person’s lifetime that impact the next generations.

When discussing inequalities within the design industry, what terms and statistics do you want the NDW audience to be familiar with?

Women make up 20% of architects, black architects make up only 3%, and black women architects make up a mere .03% of architects. Women are paid 80% of what white males are paid, and black women (who are hit with a double whammy of sexism and racism) are paid 63% (63 cents on the dollar). Attrition and equal pay are systemic issues.

Uncomfortable conversations drive change. What tactics have you found to be the most effective in helping people understand your point of view?

It is very effective to be able to tell a story in order to humanize the conversation. Often when someone is not afflicted by something, they have the perception that it does not exist. Storytelling that’s personal, followed by facts that support the story, helps the listener develop empathy for the situation. This method can even inspire actionable change.

What educational materials do you suggest to the NDW community?

Written by Valarie–

Health Equity
Growing Compassionately: Transportation Equity in Communities
Equity In Communities
Systemic Racism Explained

Watch–

Understanding the effects of segregation 

Read–

The Color of Law

Buy–

NOMAnash The Coloring Book of Architecture

Donate–

NOMAnash

Is there a question you would like the NDW community to consider prior to your event?

Do you think Systemic Racism exists? If so, how do you feel it has affected professional design careers?

—

Keep up with Valarie on LinkedIn.