Walking with Purpose in Shoes That Fit
My career in D & I (Diversity & Inclusion) found its origins, as many things do: from childhood challenges. I spent a lot of my life feeling as if I didn’t quite fit in. Perhaps I was never taught how to fit in — how to bend myself to fit in other peoples’ spaces.
After all, I was an only-child — able to do as I wished and not conform to accommodate the hankerings of siblings. I had a renegade mother who left the United States for many years to live in Europe because she didn’t like the way Black people were being treated in the U.S. She left the traditional Black-Baptist church to become a Christian Scientist, and stood-up the first man she was supposed to marry and then married my dad after knowing him for a month. She was a French professor, a real-estate broker, and a barber-shop owner, who sent me on wine tastings in Europe at age 14 (although she didn’t drink because her father was a raging alcoholic.) She taught me to appreciate fried bologna sandwiches and 8-course dinners, Turkish rugs, and adventure.
I’m sure my mother found being married to my father an adventure. My father was a math genius who went to Morehouse at age 15 but eventually had to transfer because he kept being thrown into jail for participating in civil rights protests. He was a motorcycle riding, pot smoking, practicing Buddhist who worked with the government to help build the internet. He was a man with a beautiful mind, who saw no boundaries.
Their marriage ushered me into a world with aunts, uncles, and cousins, who came from single-stoplight country towns and the Bronx, were devout Christians and loyal Muslims, who were doctors and street pharmacists, who were Puerto Rican, Asian, Black and White, who were liberal and conservative, new-money rich and dirt poor. During holidays, we’d sit around dining room tables, card tables, or lay across couches and on floors, full of various foods from our different cultures and religions; and debate current issues from our distinctly different perspectives.
By comparison, most other gatherings seemed bland. People self-segregated, which put me in the position of having to choose to be with one group or another; and making me feel as if I didn’t fit in either. I soon realized that when I was in spaces with great diversity, I didn’t feel called upon to be anything but myself; but when I was in monocultural settings I felt uncomfortable because those spaces suggested that there was only one way to be and to think.
The realization of how different environments affected my comfort level, combined with my broad traveling experiences, my eccentric family of characters, isolating experiences such as being the only minority in a school and being the second Black family to move into a neighborhood, sprouted a desire to help people realize the beauty of diversity and the necessity of inclusive environments.
Consequently, for over two decades I’ve worked with schools, tech-startups, large and small government agencies, and Fortune 100 companies to develop and execute plans to foster diverse and inclusive environments. I signed long-term contracts but refused to work as an in-house Diversity & Inclusion executive because as a contractor I felt I had more freedom to act as an advocate for all employees (regardless of position, age, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, location, language, tenure, etc.) and not just as a figurehead for one or two leaders. I never wanted to be a check-the-box, ineffective, performative D&I professional, who espoused meaningless, directionless platitudes about tolerance. Instead, I was determined to create programs that impacted organizational culture that were woven throughout the entire fabric of a company and provided practical skills to improve interactions.
Ultimately, D&I has not just been my career, but also my life’s passion.
As the pages of the calendar turned, I believed that I would engage with my passion by traveling the world, writing more books and articles, and continuing to speak at conferences. My plan was to stop working with companies directly by the end of the year.
That “plan” got disrupted when I started delivering seminars centered around D&I topics to Freshworks. The obvious diversity I could observe from tiny Zoom boxes; the comfort people felt sharing diverse opinions; the impressive growth of female-identifying employees; the groups that regularly met with the focus of continuously fostering a more diverse and nurturing culture; and the open conversations I had with Freshworks’ leaders informed me that nothing about Freshworks’ commitment to continue to foster an inclusive, equitable and diverse culture was performative. Freshworks isn’t simply talking the talk, but purposefully walking the walk. I want to walk with them.
I want to walk on this journey with Freshworks (sometimes from the front — leading the way particularly up steep hills or deep curves, sometimes from the middle monitoring our pace and direction, and sometimes from the back giving encouragement to keep walking). Along our journey, I don’t want anyone to feel as if they are walking in shoes that don’t fit; as if they are taking painful monotonous steps, with eyes on the ground and with backs bent because the destination is unclear or their unique gait devalued. My intention is that this journey is one that encourages us to unfold — to stand straight — to feel as if we are walking in shoes that fit, in our natural gait and pace, purposefully in the direction that allows each person and Freshworks to reach our highest potential.
