Category: Inclusive Leadership
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst, and Sam Sepah, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Product Manager at Google, have an open conversation around “Why Mentorship & Advocacy Are Key to Career Growth.” Sam describes his journey as a Deaf Persian in tech. He shares key takeaways from his work in HR and DEI, the difference between having a mentor and having an advocate, and how as allies and advocates we can work to make products and tools like AI universally useful.
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst, and Jeremy Sussman, Senior Product Manager at Google, explore “An Allyship Journey As A Straight, White Man.” Jeremy shared why becoming an ally is so critical to seeing real improvements in diversity, equity, and inclusion at work, and the role of allies in ERGs to actively create change.
In this episode, Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst, speaks with Sheree Atcheson, author of Demanding More. Sheree and Melinda dive into strategies for how to effectively help leaders succeed in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even when we may not be in a position of power ourselves.
In this episode Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst and Karen Catlin, CEO of Karen Catlin Consulting and author of Better Allies, discuss how we can each build empathy and create positive change for others by first understanding our own privilege.
Join Change Catalyst Founder & CEO Melinda Briana Epler with Andrea G. Tatum Senior Director, Corporate Equity Engagement, Catalyst Inc on discussing how to create a supportive working environment.
We discuss the Catalyst’s research and the challenges of the emotional tax for women, particularly women of color: the state of being highly “on guard” at work, which can impact well-being and ability to thrive in the workplace.
In this rich conversation, we learned about:
- Andrea’s personal experience experiencing racism in the workplace and how that led her to become an advocate.
- The role of inclusive leaders to develop workplace cultures where people feel valued and enabled to contribute their skills and expertise fully.
- The powerful change leading with empathy can create in the workplace.
Join Change Catalyst Founder & CEO Melinda Briana Epler with Daralyse Lyons on understanding what it means to be an upstander. An upstander is an individual who sees wrong and acts also called an ally.
We talked about Daralyse Lyons’s upbringing as a biracial kid and what led her to become an advocate and an upstander. In this fascinating conversation,
We learned about:
- Colorism and the dangerous path to rank people based on their skin colors.
- The difference between an upstander and bystander and how can we become an ally.
- The intersectionality of diversity and its assets to the corporate world and product development process.
- The inclusive leadership path people can choose in a corporate environment to lead by example.
| 44 min
Join Change Catalyst Founder & CEO Melinda Briana Epler with Irma Olguin Jr, CEO & Co-Founder at Bitwise Industries, in conversation about Leading the Change.
We talk about Irma’s story as a granddaughter of immigrants, who starting out working as a farm laborer in the California Central Valley. After earning an engineering degree, she eventually became CEO of a company working to improve diversity and inclusion in tech through technology education. Irma recently closed a Series A round of fundraising of $27M, one of the largest ever led by a Latinx female founder. We discuss innovative ways that leaders can build empathy and allyship across the organization, how to build a sense of belonging during unprecedented times, and what allyship looks like for Irma.
| 49 min
Join Change Catalyst Founder & CEO Melinda Briana Epler with Lionel Lee, Head of Diversity Engagement at Zillow Group, in conversation about Engaging Leadership. We talk about Lionel’s story, what empathy looks like in 2020, how Lionel has worked with leadership to build allyship and deepen understanding for people from underrepresented identities, and the deep work of building empathy across the company.
| 48 min
Join Change Catalyst Founder & CEO Melinda Briana Epler with Ritu Bhasin, Speaker, Author & Consultant at Bhasin Consulting Inc. to discuss Living & Leading through Fear, Bias & Othering.
Learn more about Ritu’s work at bhasinconsulting.com/
