Why Care?#28: Claire Brody - DEI and the Art of Localisation
“There’s no pressure on you to be global - there’s pressure on you to think about who is around your table. To think about who you’re bringing in to start a strategy.”
In Episode 28, I am joined by Claire Brody, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Warner Bros. Discovery, to discuss the art of localisation. Claire shares valuable learning and insight on how to develop a DEI strategy that can be adapted at a local level, addressing proximity bias and the importance of perspective-taking.
Claire’s DEI journey is filled with varied career experiences - she has worked as an assistant producer and on-camera presenter. She is also a certified yoga instructor, a poet, and a published children’s author. Claire’s experiences outside of the US deepened her commitment to empowering her colleagues in local regions. Through leading with radical empathy and a sincere intention to foster an inclusive and conscious culture of well-being and belonging, she has had numerous achievements such as building the first DEI function in EMEA, creating the first mental health infrastructure for the enterprise, and founding the inaugural enterprise Disney Pride employee resource group.
In our conversation, we explore the cultural differences between Western and Eastern cultures and how that should shape a DEI strategy. Based on a Western perspective, DEI is really about celebrating what makes you different, however, she explains that the Eastern culture is rooted in harmony. Thus, it is about organisations understanding these differences and shaping their strategy around this. As we discuss in the interview, it is important that “we empower our region to empower us as experts to create a nimble and global strategy”. As such, it becomes a strategic framework that each region feeds into, thereby making it more applicable to the local country. Claire clarifies that it is only through engaging in the art of localisation that we then truly understand the unique value each region brings to the table when creating a DEI strategy.
Further on in our conversation, Claire offers advice and tips to leaders on how to be proactive in implementing their DEI strategy. With the opportunities available at HQ, it is imperative that organisations have talent mobility schemes, which create visibility and empowers talent across the globe by providing them with an opportunity in the HQ for their own development, and also for leaders, so they have increased visibility of their expertise.
To conclude, Claire admits that addressing our biases can be challenging to do, as it requires recognising the “potency of whiteness and the hysteria that comes from it”, and that can be a very uncomfortable thing to accept. As she rightly mentions, “Having the privilege of being exposed to black culture doesn’t absolve her of her white identity”, rather, constant practice is required in “deconstructing the systems that I operate in and benefit from”. Claire explains that in order to be inclusive, we need to move beyond discomfort, adopt perspective-taking, and be active allies. By constantly doing this, we are one more step closer to building and creating an inclusive space for our employees and for ourselves.
Links:
Claire can be found on LinkedIn as Claire Brody
For more from Warner Bros. Discovery, visit their website at: https://wbd.com/
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Transcript
Claire Brody 00:00
There's no pressure on you to be global. There's pressure on you to think about who is around your table. To think about who you're bringing in to start a strategy in an American multinational, for example, or wherever that multinational is headquartered to think about the proximity bias, obviously, that exists, but also to think about how you're thinking about folks from outside the US as an underrepresented voice at your table. You have an office full of Americans who are let's say the opposite is based in Amsterdam, you have plenty of Dutch talent, but how are you thinking about outside of the proximity that you work within on a day-to-day basis, who you're bringing into those spaces?
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:38
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organizational growth and success by inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organizations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organization that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries, who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society through sharing life experiences, and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organizations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to episode 28 of The Why Care Podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo, and I am your host. Before introducing this episode, I'd like to make a special request that you rate and review The Why Care Podcast on your podcast player.
This makes more of a difference than you may realize and will allow people to find and listen to the show. In this episode, I am joined by Claire Brody, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Warner Brothers Discovery. Claire has had an impressive career starting out as an assistant producer and onscreen presenter before joining Disney where she founded the inaugural Disney pride Employee Resource Group relocated from LA to London, where she built the first DEI function in EMEA and created the first mental health infrastructure for the company. Claire speaks about the challenges of creating a global DEI strategy that is hyperlocal and shares her story of discovering what it means to belong in a US company when living in other regions. She offers creative ways to empower talent across the globe, and advice for global leaders to be more inclusive in their practice. This is such a thought-provoking episode. I hope you learn as much as I did. Enjoy.
Claire, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the Why Care Podcast show. I'm very excited about our conversation. Thank you for joining me.
Claire Brody 03:17
Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of yours and the podcast. So, it's really wonderful to be here. Thanks again.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:23
I would like to start just by getting a sense of your background and your career. How did you end up in diversity, equity and inclusion?
Claire Brody 03:33
Yes, so I ended up in diversity, equity, and inclusion in a more roundabout way. Let's say I think I was a film school graduate. I grew up in small town, East Texas, went to school at the University of Texas at Austin, always wanted to move to LA. That was always kind of my dream. And so, I did that after university and I started my time in LA pursuing comedic acting, I pursued on camera hosting. And also at the time, I think in university, I was so fascinated by organizational culture. And so, I've spent quite a bit of time at a number of different media company doing trainee apprenticeships, internships, covering phones, whatever I could kind of get my hands on to get into the space. And that was really fascinating to me. Ultimately, I landed a role with the Walt Disney Company.
I started at a network called at the time it was ABC Family. It's now Freeform. And so, I worked in production there. One of the shows I worked on was Pretty Little Liars, if anyone's ever heard of that. As a kid, I was always curious how things worked. Disney was such a big company that there was real opportunity to work in different almost sectors within the company. And so, I was curious after I understood how we made things. I was very curious how we sold things. And so. I moved into a role and had the opportunity to work for the president of Walt Disney Studio marketing and he oversaw Luca’s film, Marvel, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Live action and so forth. And that was incredible. He also was an out executive and at the time, I was closeted. I was living with my then partner and it was for me, I just never thought I was going to be out at work, it was always something that I thought, You know what I'll go to work. And then who I go home to at night is really no one's business. And so, working for him, that felt very profound to me, it wasn't that he was the gay executive, it just wasn't something that he necessarily hid. And so, at the time of working for him, I started with a group of employees, the enterprise-wide Disney pride group.
And so not only did I come out to myself, but I came out in the workplace, something I never, ever thought I would do. And then I think what you think is going to hold you back is actually your superpower, is something that propelled me forward in the end. And I think, working in that role, specifically, you know, I got to be in rooms with some of the most powerful people in the media industry. And it was very clear to me in those rooms, when I was almost in this chief of staff like role that the business was shifting to a direct-to-consumer landscape, we were focusing more and more than ever on the international landscape. And obviously, with a direct consumer shift, you have to think about how do you get hyperlocal around the globe to have a really agile global company. So, I started to get a little bit curious about what are we doing outside the US that relates to diversity, equity and inclusion? And I think that was when I had that aha moment. And I said, Okay, I really think there's a demand here. And I think I know how to supply it. It was almost basic entrepreneurial mindset of here's the demand, and here's how I intend to supply that demand. The hypothesis was really what does it mean to belong at an American multinational when you work outside the US. And then further to that, it was what does diversity, equity and inclusion look like and feel like around the globe. And so that is really what propelled me into the work in DEI.
I moved to the UK, that first year was a really incredible experience, I went on a listening tour with 167 employees, I think it was, and I never and even still, to this day, five years into living outside the US would claim to be an expert outside the US. But I've certainly developed expertise in working outside the US and really understanding through that listening tour where I had experts in markets around the world helping me understand, sharing their intelligence, and their perspectives with me, that really helped me develop in a personal way, my own worldview. But also, it helped me build my own acumen as it related to how diversity, equity and inclusion shows up in different parts of the world and sort of being rooted in a western mindset but then spending a significant amount of time in markets like Shanghai was incredible. Growing up in the States, I really got a chance to immerse in different cultures and also in forming a different understanding of what I would have thought based on my Western mindset was DEI is really celebrating what makes you different. But then as you get further east, it's really the culture is rooted in harmony. And so, the idea of standing out or stepping out and talking about what makes you different, the approach to that is very different. And so, it wasn't just physically meeting people where they were, but it was also figuratively and really trying to understand from those experts to empower me with the information to really synthesize that into some really key beings and priorities to be able to ultimately drive my role in leading DEI.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:08
What a story I mean, I'm really curious about this listening tour. Where did this idea come from? How did you set something like that up? Where did you go, who were you listening to? I've got lots of questions.
Claire Brody 08:21
I would listen to anyone and everyone that was willing to share. The idea came from someone who was an incredible mentor. And someone I've really looked to in this space. LaTonya Newton, who is the Chief Diversity Officer at Disney, she goes by Ton, and Ton started her role at Disney on a listening tour. And I thought that was such a compelling way to go out into different businesses, different markets, and really listen and let experts in each business and market really empower her, so that she was able to synthesize that into the way forward. And so, I took a very similar approach when I'm outside the US. And I was really trying to deepen my own acumen in working outside the US and what different folks across the globe were experiencing, and how we could better empower them, how we could think about the centralization of power when you have a headquarters in the States, but you really want to be a global company, that listening piece is incredibly important. So it really helped form your own perspective and find a way forward.
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:18
That makes complete sense. So, you've mentioned Shanghai and some of the nuances in that culture. And obviously, there are a lot more nuances, but what other countries did you visit, and where else did you get that information from?
Claire Brody 09:30
That's a great question. So, in terms of that first year, I spent about six weeks with our office in Shanghai, which at the time was the headquarters for AIPAC. I was based in the UK, so I was spending quite a bit of time in and around London, and also in a number of markets within the EMEA region. After that first year, I ultimately was appointed to build a DEI infrastructure for the EMEA region. And that was around the acquisition of Fox, at that time, we were operating in 28 markets, if you think about even the regions within that region, it was incredibly complex and so different. So, I spent time in Munich, I spent time in Paris, spent time in Ireland, spent time obviously back in the States with teams there and attending conferences with folks from around the globe as well. So, it was really an exciting time for me as well, because I hadn't spent a lot of time outside the US at that point in my life.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:19
And how important do you think then it is for any DEI professional or leader, particularly for working in a global context, to spend time outside of either the country that is HQ or the country of their birth, that they actually have some experience living and working or being in other cultures.
Claire Brody 10:42
I think it's incredibly important, if someone has the privilege and opportunity or access and is in a position in their life where they are able to relocate from a personal perspective. And I've talked to a number of other expats about this journey to self-discovery, when you are away from your home country, when you're away from all the things that give you your identity, whether it's something as simple as the car you drive, or the friends you have, or the gym you go to, or whatever it may be, all of these things give you your identity. And so, when you are displaced, you're the independent variable in a new environment. And you have to figure it out and for me, it was really that journey of going from feeling really lonely to being empowered in being alone. And so, I think that sense of self and that self-discovery piece is really important. But beyond that, I think people are doing what they can with what they know. And as Maya Angelou said, until we know better can we do better. And so, it kind of goes back to if you don't have the opportunity, or aren't in a place in your life, where it's practical to move outside the US or outside of your home country, whatever that may be. I think it's incredibly important to think about the people that you have in your network, to think about that proximity bias, to think about how to enrich your perspective based on the perspectives you're listening to, that you're welcoming. And that what you're absorbing, are creating not just your sense of self, but also helping develop your perspective and view on the world. And I think understanding what something isn't, is also understanding what something is. And so, coming here outside of kind of the HQ for me here in the UK, when you get chump strategies from the US team that are meant to be, quote scaled across different regions. The art of localization is something that I really learned by understanding what it wasn't in that instance. And so, I think that's a really critically important piece to think about spending time with people around the globe to help enrich your perspective.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:28
Yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense, because what you're speaking at, obviously, is at an organizational cultural level. But within some of the workshops that we run, we encourage people at an individual level to look at who they surround themselves with, right? There's an exercise called the trusted 10, or inside circle, which I'm sure many people will know of, where you're just kind of understanding, who am I ‘go to’ people, who are my trusted people, who I would go to for support for to facilitate my own thinking? What are their diversity characteristics and how similar or different are they to me. And one of the key characteristics, obviously, of an inclusive leader is to just push yourself I think, often some of the best inclusive leaders are telling me that they deliberately read a paper that's of a different political leaning to the one that they have or follow people on social media that genuinely have opposing views to their own. So, kind of what you're saying here, right? It's sort of actively even if you can't physically move out of your own country and get that experience. There are other ways of picking up that information to understand how other people experience work in the organization.
Claire Brody 13:42
Absolutely. If you're in a position of power, let's say the US is the HQ in a multinational, in the sense of, if you have the opportunity to offer work assignments or stretch assignments for folks to spend time in the US, for example, that's incredibly important as well. One of the things that one of our DEI sponsors for the EMEA region put into place was a talent mobility scheme that was really about creating visibility, but also empowering talent across the globe by providing opportunities to spend time in the HQ for their own development as well, but also so that folks and leaders had visibility to their expertise and to what they were driving. And I think that's an incredibly important opportunity as well.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:26
That's a really interesting point that you raise, which is often opportunities come from those who are in closer proximity to head office, right. And hence why something like a talent mobility programme to get people closer to that, to where decision-making is taking place and more of the corporate kind of strategy is decided, is important. However, not everyone can get close to head office, particularly with globalization with so many satellite offices, even if a satellite office is huge, right? I have worked in organizations where I'm speaking to people in a pretty large London office, where America is head office, and they still feel like they're undermined, or they're not considered when decisions are made. That they're just told that in order to progress in the organization, it's easier to do it if you're closer to head office. How do you create equity in a global organization? Is it possible to get away from the head office versus other offices?
Claire Brody 15:29
I think it's a really great question. I think that you have a situation where power starts to get bottlenecked or rather perspectives outside head office, for example, or even in a region like EMEA, let's say the UK is your head office, these other markets are feeding in or sharing initiatives that they're driving on a local level, that might actually be the best way forward for the enterprise. But if those individuals don't have the visibility to leadership and a decision-making role, and their perspectives are bottlenecked, you have a problem with that. But the company at large will suffer from being able to be as agile and as hyperlocal, to create that globalization of the organizations. Another opportunity outside of thinking about just the power dynamic, and how to make sure that you keep more voices at the table is thinking about, let's say, if you're based in the US and you have a global strategy, and you thought we're going to scale this out across our regions, that already takes away from regions being able to feed into that global strategy. So, I would almost reframe that to say, instead of scaling a strategy to make it global, why don't you empower your regions to inform you, as you're creating that global strategy with what makes sense within their regions. So that it's not actually a strategy that's made in the US that's been scaled, but it's a strategic framework that each of the regions feeds into, and then they take that framework and make that make sense within the context of their businesses of their markets. And I think it's really just flipping that on its head of, we're not going to scale this, we're actually going to empower our regions to empower us as the experts so that we can create a really nimble and global strategy.
Nadia Nagamootoo 17:07
Yeah, given the scale of where, for example, an organization like Warner Brothers Discovery is in the world. That sounds incredibly challenging to create momentum and engagement. Firstly, actually, this is important, and it's important for our organization because of this. So, because every organization has so much nuance with regards to diversity, equity and inclusion and how it plays out in their culture, and also how much of a lens or how important that culture feels it is. And as you mentioned, just now that what's important to one local culture or country is less important to another. And so how do you mobilize every local DEI team? I assume there are sort of multiple little teams working in their own countries or regions who come together and create that.
Claire Brody 18:00
Great question. I think that’s incredibly complex, when you work across an enterprise, I think you have many different brands, you have a suite of brands, essentially, each with their own very specific cultures, and each with cultures that deserve to sort of be met with integrity of protecting that culture and what made that brand so special, that ultimately it became a part of the enterprise. I think when it comes to mobilizing local teams, it's really about empowering those teams first and foremost as the expert. If I think back to my role specific within EMEA, at Disney at the time, I met with each of our markets and said, first and foremost, you are the expert here. So, I am looking to you to really empower me with the expertise of this market. And we started with two dimensions of diverse identity, whether it was gender, whether it was race, ethnicity, and it sort of started from there, which I think anytime you can make DEI make sense within the context of a business or market in this instance, is really important. It's important for employees to feel seen. One of my favorite things thus far in my time at Warner Brothers discovery was an email that went out about summer hours, which I think is quite common, particularly the UK where we have really short days in the winter. So, we usually kind of have a company-wide summer hour offering where folks are able to essentially have a Friday afternoon off to enjoy the sunshine sort of rework their week in a way that they're able to do that.
In the email that went out recently, the summer in the southern hemisphere is starting. And so even the acknowledgement from our chief people officer that the summer hours in the southern hemisphere are starting on these dates, that is such a small thing. But it's these small little things that compound over time to create that sense of feeling included, and of feeling seen. And a really good friend of mine, Curtis Johnson, who leads a Black employee consumer experience work at Disney. He has built out a framework around people feeling seen, valued, and empowered. And I think the first step is really making people feel seen in different markets. Because once people feel seen and treated as experts, they are mobilizing the work much easier for everyone. So, I think that's really the key, it is by starting with making people feel seen and that one example of the Southern Hemisphere was just something that I noticed and just smiled when I read it, because I thought, wow, that's brilliant that we're really thinking so globally, in all of the ways that our senior leadership is communicating to the employee population worldwide.
Nadia Nagamootoo 20:21
It makes such a difference, doesn't it? That little thought that this isn't a blanket to everyone, and that different people are going to be reading this. And so then even small things that make a difference to me, where if I'm working with a global team, and they just start talking in ET time, because they're the majority, and I'm always on the World Time buddy, or converter, to see what time are they talking about? Can I make that time? Whereas it would be wonderful, wouldn't it if they in brackets just said, Whatever UK time or even if it was Central European Time, it helps me a little bit. If it's even slightly more closer, regionally, there's that feeling of oh, they thought about me, they realized that I'm reading it too. I'm interested in if there are any examples of particular cultures where working cross-culturally, and maybe this is Western compared to Eastern, you mentioned a little bit of the nuances there already. But where there are genuinely some challenges when it comes to implementing a DEI strategy, where have you found from a US headquarters organization, where is the largest challenge culturally of making that work?
Claire Brody 21:37
I think that in my time that I've spent outside the US, I have really started to learn that disability and mental health, for example, as well as gender are pretty universal worldwide. As you get into different cultures and historical context, cultural context, context around government operations, you start to really have a different understanding of what the majority is, is the minority in some places as it relates to race and ethnicity, cultural heritage. So, I think, really understanding that starting somewhere is starting. And so, I never want to impose a DEI agenda on a market. But I think it's also understanding what can we do within the four walls, or at least the virtual walls of this organization to make our people feel safe, feel supported, and be able to do their best work. And I think outside of that there are other efforts that you can make within a local community. Obviously, the organization at large has a government affairs team that can work on lobbying or supporting certain pieces around governments and changes there. But I think, from my perspective, since living outside the US, it's really been meeting people where they are and meeting people within the challenges and the obstacles that they face rather than sort of trying to impose an agenda and try to force progress in a place that it might not even be safe for the individuals that you're working with to push for that progress in that moment. So really being able to step back and say, what can we start with? And how can we find an entry point into this conversation and into this work?
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:05
Yeah. And when you just said that they might not even be ready for that yet. The conversations around LGBTQ plus and obviously, you’re identifying with that community. How do you personally navigate your own values, and what's important to you and your identity, when you're working with a culture that doesn't necessarily accept or even it could be illegal to have a diversity characteristic that you hold?
Claire Brody 23:34
It's challenging. It's a moment where I stepped into understanding my own privilege of where I grew up, where I worked in California, moving to the UK, when I'm in markets, or spending time in parts of the world where I don't feel safe as a human being that I am. It's sobering in the sense that I also can reflect on what a privilege I've had to be in a part of the world where I have been able to be myself. And it's not that I don't experience microaggressions, or things that come with being othered, but at the end of the day, I'm still a human and it impacts you in some way, I tried to sort of harness that energy into what I can do to support LGBTQIA plus folks within those markets, or parts of the world where I personally don't feel safe myself. So, it's almost given me the opportunity to double down on how to support and also through the lens of other diverse characteristics and communities across the board.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:28
Yeah, it's such an important question to ask a DEI practitioner, right? Because we work in this space. And our role is to support and meet people where they are, as you say, but when they're not then accepting that of some of the things that are important to you or that you identify with, I think that it can be a real challenge for any of us, as you say, we're human, right? So of course, it's going to affect us. So, I'm interested then in some of the leaders that you've worked with. Are there any themes or are there any clear gaps, typically that you see in leaders when they are working cross-culturally that they need to work on in order to embrace and be more effective as inclusive leaders?
Claire Brody 25:08
I think it's a great question, I would go back to what I was speaking on earlier around empowering the experts. And I fell into this trope when I lived and worked in the US, which was, Oh, we're a global team or my role is global, I have to be global, and then, you start to put this pressure on yourselves. And I think now having worked outside the US for several years, I look back and think there's no pressure on you to be global, there's pressure on you to think about who is around your table, to think about who you're bringing in to start a strategy in an American multinational, for example, or wherever that multinational is headquartered to think about the proximity bias, obviously that exists, but also to think about how you're thinking about folks from outside the US as an underrepresented voice at your table. You have an office full of Americans where let's say the opposite is based in Amsterdam, you have plenty of Dutch talent, but how are you thinking about outside of the proximity that you work within on a day-to-day basis, and who you are bringing into those spaces. So, I think the advice or the gap that I've seen is, don't put pressure on yourself to be a global leader. Just make sure that you have people around your table from around the globe and that will happen.
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:19
Yeah, I love that. Certainly, I've experienced in leaders, where they're working globally, and they're very senior in their role, that it gets to a point where they feel so overwhelmed by the task at hand, how do I be this inclusive leader and ensure that everyone feels like they belong, and they get a bit stuck, they're not doing very much at all. And the gap gets bigger in terms of what they need to work on. I'm interested in any sort of global initiatives that you've put in place that have been really successful in creating momentum for DEI, but also real impact across regions.
Claire Brody 26:58
There's one thing that comes to mind immediately for me, so when I moved to the UK, and those first six months were really challenging on a very personal level with my own mental health.. And I at the time, was very surprised and also felt very supported in the UK, it felt like mental health was something that wasn't a bad word. It wasn't something that people weren't trying to address, it was you would be on a tube and you would see it's okay not to be okay, and then work by hurt at work that they were going to do a Mental Health First Aid training and see how that was gonna go. And I thought, okay, of course, if we have physical health and mental health, everybody has it. So why wouldn't we have mental health crusaders in the same way we have physical Health First Aiders. And so that for me, and I think the personal place I was in at the time, was something that I started initial conversations with some colleagues in the US, it was shut down. We don't really go and venture into that, we're not experts in mental health. And so, we want to make sure that we're really careful. But it felt like if I was imposing that US perspective in the UK, that it didn't feel right. I think the Princes had been very open with their journey of mental health because of the loss of their mother. I think, culturally, it just felt like the UK was further ahead. And so, I actually found a couple of employees at the company that were very passionate about mental health and being able to destigmatize that in the workplace. And so, we created a led by employees for employees mental health network called TRUST, it stood for Talk, Recognize, Understand, Support, and Triumph.
And that was met also with the Mental Health First Aid training courses that HR was running. So, we kind of had the crisis point that we also had this amazing mental health network that was really about destigmatizing the conversation about creating opportunities for people to embrace their mental well-being in a way that had never really been done before. And after we got it off the ground. Speaking back on Letendre. Again, I remember sharing it with Tom and thinking, I might walk into work tomorrow and lose my job because I've launched this in the UK, and I'm not sure if this is gonna go over. And ultimately, it was met with so much positivity. And little did we know we were four months out from a global pandemic, where mental health is going to enter the forefront of every conversation in every workplace. And so even the folks that were hesitant initially, when I wanted to launch this in the first place, were knocking down the virtual door to say, Claire, can you share those resources, we want to start a chapter of TRUST, and we want to start somewhere, and we know you have some great work. So, it was a real opportunity to spotlight the fact that, first of all, we had another market outside the US that was ahead of the game. It was an opportunity for me to step back and say I'm not going to impose my American perspective to stop this from happening. I'm actually going to do the opposite, take a risk and put this forward. And it's been an incredible journey just to watch that happen and be able to see how that's been scaled across the enterprise.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:50
Love that. So how many TRUST groups or networks have now been created? Do you know?
Claire Brody 29:56
I think there are around seven now across the EMEA region. And again, kind of back to that globalization, mental health is something everyone has. So, it's a really universal entry point into the conversation, then you could even click down further and say, obviously, we know that marginalized groups are experiencing more ill mental health than non-marginalized groups. So, there's a real universal entry point, I think globally, which is, so for markets that maybe weren't ready to jump in on the LGBTQIA plus work, they were open to the Mental Health Network trust. So, it was a great bridge as well into building more of our DEI agenda and going deeper into the work.
Nadia Nagamootoo 30:34
I love that. I really enjoy that example, as just a way in where everyone can connect with this. So, we're coming very close to the end of our conversation. And I've got so many more things I want to ask you. But I'm asking this of all my guests, and I'm in the process of writing a book, it's called Beyond Discomfort. And I'd like you to share, if you will, something that has been the most uncomfortable area that you've had to manage yourself, address, or have a conversation about that is DEI related as a professional and leader working in this space.
Claire Brody 31:13
First of all, I'm very excited for your book. There's something I wrote actually, a couple of summers ago after the murder of George Floyd, which I think I said at some point in the article, your comfort will never be more important than the progress I could tell you about my coming out journey. And I think that was an incredibly profound experience in my life to come out in the work where I was able to find support and come into my own. But I think I'll go for the example that feels less comfortable to talk about, which is I'm a white identifying LGBT woman. I grew up in a small town in East Texas, White was the minority at my high school, and my parents raised me, but I was also raised by a black mother called her Sandburg. But her name is Sandra. And I think growing up and having such an appreciation for black culture and then growing up in my life, I always thought, Oh, I'm one of the good ones. And because so many of my friends are black, I'm quote ‘one of the good ones’. And just because I have had the privilege of being exposed and have an appreciation for black culture in the way that I do, doesn't absolve me of my white identity. And to use a term that Rachel Kargil has coined the potency of whiteness and acknowledging my own whiteness and acknowledging that when I step into spaces, or the potency of whiteness, and the hysteria that comes from that, that's been an incredibly uncomfortable journey, to say, actually, I'm not quote ‘one of the good ones’, that's not something that exists. Every single day, it's really a journey for me to deconstruct the things that I believe, the systems that I operate within and benefit from, and really think about what that journey is, which is a daily practice. I listened in the last couple of weeks to your conversation with Mark, it's that active allyship, it's being responsible of the pursuit of allyship, and not necessarily calling myself an ally, but being in pursuit of owning what I can within the spaces that I can't influence myself, but also in not letting myself just absolve my white identity from my own work to do every day.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:08
Oh, I love that. I think that's so powerful, what you just said, and that continuous work that you have to do. Because whilst you can relate to, and you might feel you have an inner understanding due to who you were raised by partly and also the school you were in, and your upbringing, and that actually, there's more to the complexity of DEI. And when it comes to race and ethnicity, it is so deep, the history is still so raw, in so many ways, that walking through the world with the color skin that you have, which is white still influences you, how you're treated, the lens that you see the world and everything else. And thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it.
Claire Brody 33:58
Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you for writing your book. I'm very excited to read it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 34:02
I will absolutely send you a copy. Thank you so much, Claire. If people want to get ahold of you, what social channels are you on?
Claire Brody 34:10
I am available on LinkedIn. That's probably the best platform for me to connect with folks. So, I look forward to it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 34:18
Brilliant. The link to everything that Claire and I spoke about today is going to be available on the show notes page, the usual place www.avenirconsultingservices.com under podcasts, I have loved speaking to you Claire I could speak to you for so much longer. I really appreciate your time.
Claire Brody 34:33
And likewise, thank you so much. I'm so grateful for the chance and speak soon.
Nadia Nagamootoo 34:36
That concludes episode 28 of The Why Care Podcast. I found Claire's humility and dedication to her learning and understanding of self so inspiring. I love how she followed a path to the UK so she could experience firsthand the challenges of working for a US company we're living outside the states. Do let Claire and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle at Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast through leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro Kenji for editing this podcast and Glory Olubori for supporting the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
