The DEI Chronicles (Part 5 of 5): Beautiful, Like a Rainbow
How our people practices can turn an ordinary company into something extraordinary.
“But I see your true colors shining through. I see your true colors, and that’s why I love you. So don’t be afraid to let them show — your true colors, true colors — are beautiful, like a rainbow.” — Cyndi Lauper, True Colors
Though Cyndi Lauper didn’t pen the words to True Colors, it was her emotive vocals and her arrangement that transformed it from a Bridge Over Troubled Water-style gospel track into the stark, intimate declaration of unconditional love it became. She’d explain in multiple interviews that what she was trying to do was channel all she felt for her dear friend Gregory Natal who’d succumb to AIDS into the delivery. It was for him. The year was 1986, a time when HIV meant death in a matter of weeks.
Not long after True Colors came out, I’d move to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend seminary and I’d get involved in the AIDS work I’d end up doing for the next decade. I can’t remember the number of times True Colors was used in remembrance services. The song would become an affirmation to the LGBTQ+ community at a time when it needed it most, and at a time when so many others were claiming AIDS was what “those people” deserved. Nearly twenty years after recording the song, Cyndi would found True Colors United, an organization focused on addressing homelessness among LGBTQ+ youth. That’s serious mileage for a pop song.
The seminary I was attending was in Mill Valley, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was while living there in Marin County that I met Clarettia Jackson, an amazing woman. As I explain in the preface of This Land Is Your Land: Clarettia was a hairdresser. But summing her up in that way makes her sound oh so ordinary. She was anything but. A full-bodied, strikingly beautiful woman of unambiguously African descent, with waist-length hair that was all hers and four-inch stiletto heels, she was hard to miss — especially in a place where, in the early 90s, over 95% of the population presented as white.
But Clarettia, who wore both her uniqueness and her brilliant smile like a crown, wasn’t at all deterred. Both she and her business thrived and given her talent, Clarettia was one of the most sought-after stylists in the Bay Area. Sitting in her salon chair was always more therapy session than hairstyling; reflective of her first full career; she’d been a social worker who tirelessly advocated on behalf of an island of poverty in an ocean of prosperity.
Though she’d eventually change professions, she still found herself being who she was; both caring for those in need and, just as importantly, serving as an ambassador for diversity in a society where it was often disparaged. Her trademark was helping people turn something they saw as a liability into an asset. People who sat in Clarettia’s chair left with far more than a makeover; by learning to appreciate their own unique beauty, they also learned to see the same in others.
Sadly, Clarettia would succumb to cancer at the height of her career, and for those who had the chance to know her, the loss would be profound. Yet it is those who will never meet her who are the most bereft. Then, there’s Netflix’s Fab Five and their great advice for us:
Self-care is an inside job, says Jonathan.
Make an effort, says Tan.
You deserve it, says Karamo.
Food is love, says Antoni.
And Bobby’s advice? It’s your life; design it well.
Part of what’s made what they do so powerful is their use of ordinary things like grooming and fashion to help people embrace and express their true selves, the unique and extraordinary people they’ve been afraid to show the world — who they are at their best, just as Clarettia did. Antoni, Bobby, Jonathan, Karamo, and Tan, five queer men, each in their own way, empower people to embrace their true colors, beautiful, like a rainbow.
Cyndi Lauper, Clarettia and the Fab Five are all examples of people who took something seemingly ordinary and used it to perform extraordinary feats in the world. That’s essentially what we do at every juncture and in every way. Though we’ve been told all our lives that there are certain people who possess extraordinary gifts, that’s not exactly how it works. There’s really no such thing as extraordinary gifts; just ordinary gifts used for extraordinary purposes.
Gandhi used the law, MLK, the pulpit, and Mother Teresa, service. Walraven van Hall, who funded the Dutch resistance during WWII, used banking and accounting to change the world. Bob Dylan used a guitar. Althea Gibson, a tennis racket. William Moore, an Anglo mail carrier, walked thousands of miles hand-delivering letters advocating racial equality to public officials.
But perhaps my favorite is all the ways people have used HR to change the world. Because every time we make the workplace more humane and equitable, every time we enable each other to see everyone’s true colors, we save more than their life, we save our own. Below are seven HR habits that can transform an ordinary organization into an extraordinary one:
1. Right-size our expectations.
In a 2017 Forbes article titled, Employers Are Overlooking Non-traditional Candidates And It’s Costing Them, Austin Belcak explains how if you’re turning down candidates due to their lack of “traditional” qualifications, you’re likely missing out on your next top performer. He describes how candidates are acquiring comparable, and sometimes even better skills from online, often free courses, and even by teaching themselves.
“Candidates who attended a top 50 university, majored in your industry, graduated with a GPA above 3.5 (or even 3.0), and have some industry experience are cut from the same cloth,” he says. “They likely saw similar curricula and were taught the same ways of thinking and problem solving. When you have a problem to solve or a need to innovate, the ideas are coming from a similar perspective. Thus, your team is more likely to overlook errors or miss solutions that could potentially undermine your success.”
I’ve seen this first-hand. Back when I left the pastorate, I applied for a job at Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I brought to that work a number of rare qualifications. First, I’m an ethnic minority who grew up in poverty and in government housing, which gave me strong commonalities with the program’s target demographic; “Littles” were non-Anglo, and almost all were from low-income households. Second, I’d both had mentors and later, during my college years, been a mentor in a similar program. And, third, by then, I’d logged more than 5,000 hours providing pastoral counseling to successful professionals — the kinds of people most likely to be “Bigs” in the program.
But in their screening process, none of this was discoverable, and therefore not part of their calculus. What mattered most was that I met their education requirement. At the time, BBBS had a rule that only people with a master’s degree could be hired. But few people with masters, especially if they also had student debt, could afford to take a full-time role that paid $20,000 per year. My Master of Divinity meant that I was interviewed, and because I was already used to a pastor’s modest salary, I could take the job.
However, I would turn out to be the only ethnic minority working in a program where most children were ethnic minorities, and I was the only one from a low-income background. Even back then, I was aware of all the people who would have been incredible in that position, but who would never get the chance. Below are six ways we can go about bringing our candidate expectations into better alignment with the requirements of the job, resulting in better hires:
A. Remain flexible. Recognize that it’s not just about how that person fits the job but how the job must be altered to fit the person. Family farms, small businesses, and those in towns that aren’t near a thriving metropolis do this all the time. Since different people can use different skills to do the same job, nothing substitutes for a conversation. The information exchange also allows the person doing the hiring to make adjustments to the role, allowing the hired person to focus on areas where their strengths are most needed.
B. Stick to the essentials. Studies show that the majority of critical capabilities needed to succeed are general, rather than specific, meaning that the same set of skills can equip one to do, or learn to do a vast variety of jobs. But if this is true, then we need to radically change what we’re looking for. Start with a distilled list of things that are absolutely necessary. Instead of a master’s, the Big Brothers/Big Sisters branch I worked for would have been much better off hiring moms, former cafeteria workers, Sunday School teachers, crossing guards or anyone else with deep, extensive knowledge of the struggles that kids from lower-income communities face.
C. Build your own profiles. Both recycled job descriptions written by others and those written, increasingly, by the likes of Chat GBT share common flaws. First, because they’re both aggregates, we’re building on the unconscious biases of previous postings. Second, the organization doing the hiring is the world’s foremost expert on what they need from the person they hire.
D. Look under the hood. Ruthlessly examine each qualification for who it disqualifies, whether people with disabilities (while a visually impaired person can’t be a trucker, they could be a dispatcher), who didn’t graduate college, who are neurodiverse (including dyslexia and ADHD), who can’t afford to secure a certain credential or hire a resume writer, can’t work full-time or who are nontraditionally intelligent.
E. Acknowledge role relatedness. Though we often think otherwise, even disparate jobs share significant functional similarities; simply because they were designed to be done by humans. This holds true for kindergarten teachers and CEOs, chefs and scientists, garbage collectors and astronauts. Sure, specialized training and know-how is needed, but even that relies on the same fundamental human capabilities.
Linked In’s Skills Genome expands our understanding even further, ignoring skills needed for almost any job (e.g. Microsoft Office), and focusing on ones particular to that role (e.g. — database management). Even still, they found significant similarities, expressed as a score between 0 and 100. Take Food Servers. Even after weeding out general skills, it had the following specific skill overlaps: Customer Service Rep (71), Office Assistant (74), Camp Counselor (68), Teaching Aide (56), Marketing Asst. (53) and Childcare Provider (53).
F. Bring apprenticeship back. Justin Timberlake isn’t the only one who can bring good things back. Apprenticeships, bringing on people who might not have the necessary credentials yet, but who have personal qualities that are harder to find, is a powerful and inexpensive way to make your company accessible. It worked for William Lloyd Garrison, arguably the most influential voice in turning America’s heart toward ending slavery. His press apprenticeship equipped him to launch The Liberator, the nation’s most-read Abolitionist newspaper.
Apprentices can be offered an “x-in-training” position with reduced pay until they gain the credential, and with the company covering the costs of them getting the credential. Doing so opens up the talent pool to people who are exceptional, but who are kept out because they don’t have the economic means to secure certification while reducing recruiting costs.
“Particular Set of Skills”
It’s easy to miss how right-sizing our expectations benefits both the company and the person looking for work. But it does. Still, it requires making certain mental adjustments. In the film, Taken, Liam Neeson’s character, when talking to the men who’d kidnapped his daughter, stated that he had “a particular set of skills”. And he did. But those skills were neither in kidnapping nor recovery. They were adjacent rather than linear, a toolbox that could be applied to all manner of unusual situations. Like getting his daughter back.
My friend Steven has worked as a house manager for a wealthy elderly couple for nearly 35 years. Over that time, other employees have come and gone: Some of them were fired; others, quit. But Steven is still with them and as they approach their 90s, they both rely on and appreciate him more than ever. Likewise, their children, all Steven’s age, are amazed at the deftness with which he does his increasingly challenging job and believe him to be practically indispensable. And he is.
But back when Steven was hired, he was in his 20s. He had one semester of college and no linear experience in a job like this. But Steven’s “particular set of skills” included other things. His years working in restaurants made him adept at dealing with customers. His natural intelligence meant that he could quickly solve all manner of problems. His even-tempered nature allows him to be both flexible and direct as needed. And he is, and always has been, absolutely trustworthy.
It’s Steven’s personal qualities, his humanness, that would make him invaluable to his employers and, no doubt, one of the best hires they’ve ever made. The same thing applies to every role.
2. Remove obstacles that prevent people from applying.
A leading job platform, on their website, boldly asserts that “98% of applicants are unqualified for the job opening”. That one statement makes two inaccurate inferences.
The first is that of the “clogged pipeline” — the idea that companies are so inundated with “bad” applicants that they, of course, need a service like the one this company offers, one that weeds them out or prevents them from applying in the first place, thereby saving the hapless hiring manager from drowning or being overrun by those wily “unqualifieds” who are trying to worm their way into jobs they can’t do.
The second is how they’ve reimagined the hiring process itself. For years now, employers have been told to set their sights higher. It’s not enough to find someone suitably qualified. Nowadays, we need the “most qualified”, which means that, like in the Hunger Games (“May the odds forever be in your favor”), we’re fixated on comparing candidates to one another, rather than to the job. We’re constantly searching the haystack for not just the needle but a golden one in a pile of yellow slivers of straw.
But unless we’re looking to set a world record in the 100m or predict the winner of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, we shouldn’t be looking for the “most” qualified. What we really need is the “first” qualified — the first person who comes through the door who can do the job. Sure, 98% of applicants won’t be Katniss, the Mockingjay.
But even Katniss herself succeeded by using different skills and doing different things than people who’d been groomed their entire lives to win. In the world of the Hunger Games, this “most qualified” approach never saw her coming. In the real world, a significant portion of the people applying for a given job could successfully do that job on day one, and a great number of others could, with a bit of training, get up to speed rather quickly and perform spectacularly.
My sister, Josie, worked as a recruiter for a long-haul trucking company, but increasingly, they were having trouble finding drivers. At the same time, she saw all kinds of hard-working people from the low-income neighborhoods we grew up in who were looking for good-paying jobs. Back then, the company required the possession of a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) — something no one from our old neighborhood could afford to get.
So, Josie suggested that they simply remove this requirement and turn it into a perk — the company would provide training and cover the fees associated with getting their CDL. All of a sudden, they had a bounty of applicants, and before long, other trucking companies were taking a similar approach. Below are five key ways we can make our recruitment efforts more effective:
A. Un-skew the process. A 2017 Harvard Business School report revealed that companies are more than twice as likely to call ethnic minority applicants for interviews if they submitted resumes that kept all factual content the same, but deleted information that indicated their identity as an ethnic.
A second 2017 Harvard Business School report revealed that since 1990, white-presenting applicants have historically received 36% more callbacks than black-presenting applicants and 24% more callbacks than Latinx applicants with identical résumés. Other research suggests that minority candidates must respond to 50% more job listings to receive the same number of replies as Anglo candidates; even when the candidates are comparably qualified.
It’s one thing to state in our job postings that “Diverse candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.” But it’s another thing altogether to remove the hurdles that make applying so arduous that those same diverse candidates opt out. The reason they won’t go through all that extra trouble is because they know the process is skewed against them already. That makes getting a call-back a numbers game.
Minority applicants already know that they’ve got to apply for more jobs to get a response, so the more hoops we require and unnecessary qualifications we list, the more likely they’re going to bypass our announcement, and the fewer diverse candidates we get.
B. Make applying easy for them, not us. When it comes to application process dropout, an Indeed survey found that the typical large company loses 9 out of 10 qualified applicants to unwieldy processes. But they don’t have to. Turns out, one of the best application methods is also the simplest — and the cheapest — email. Simply setting up a special email address for that position allows candidates to submit resumes, cover letters and other materials with no registrations no passwords, no nothing.
Go to them. After making a commitment to hire more LGBT officers, the SFPD set up recruitment tables outside gay bars in the Castro, ironically, the same kinds of places, prior to Stonewall, they’d been raiding. Stop requiring people to create an entire profile just to submit a resume or demanding references or transcripts, etc., ahead of time, just to make it more convenient for us.
Make information about pay, hours and reporting relationship transparent. Accept video or audio as alternatives to written cover letters, which makes the process more inclusive of those with disabilities or learning differences. Make it easier, rather than harder to reach us.
C. Jettison watchwords. There are phrases that, for certain classes of candidates, are more effective at dissuading them than “whites only” signs over water fountains during segregation. Religious entities that cite the need for candidates to sign an “honor code” inform LGBTQ+ people that they shouldn’t bother applying.
Or, take “proven fundraising experience”. Perhaps nothing scares off exceptional people from low-income backgrounds more than that one phrase. Because they know they neither have the relationships nor the insider knowledge of the lifestyles of the rich and famous to take that on. So, this person who would have been an amazing leader for the organization, with insights into the population that can only be gained by experience, will simply pass that posting by.
Obviously, nonprofits need funds to continue doing the work they do. But often, the people best suited to enable the organization to fulfill its mission — its reason for existing — are hardly ever stellar fundraisers. Likewise, the people who are most likely to be rainmakers are often least likely to have the deep experience needed in order to fulfill the organization’s mission.
A better approach would be to either make “willingness to engage in fundraising efforts” a requirement, then hire a development professional to work alongside them, take a co-CEO approach or both.
D. Streamline and speed up the process. There was once a time when a person looking for work would see a “help wanted” sign in a window, go in, have a real-time conversation about the fit between the role and the candidate, and leave knowing if there was potential there if they weren’t offered a job on the spot.
Today, we’re lucky to receive even an automated email telling us the application package it took us hours to prepare has been received. But don’t bother trying to reach out to us. The email address we used to contact you goes nowhere. Don’t call us. We’ll call you. Our current process then requires that we leave the job announcement open until we’ve gathered together hundreds of packages, only to then spend weeks culling through them looking for the “most” qualified.
We then put our “finalists” through an exhausting and increasingly unwieldy interview process involving multiple interviews, followed by background checks and reference checks for the ultimate winner. Everyone else receives a form letter stating that “we have decided to move forward in the process with other candidates who we believe best meet the current needs of this position…”
You’d think that a process like this must generate amazing results, right? Wrong. Even after all this, an estimated 50% to 82% of those hires, including CEOs and C-suite hires fail within 18 months. Turns out, a coin toss would be slightly more effective. There must be a better way than this.
One such option is small-batch processing, setting a small number between 1 and 5 for how applications will be reviewed. Once the designated number of candidates apply, pause the listing until those can be reviewed. If none of the applicants meet the minimum qualifications, go to the next batch, or reactivate the posting, and repeat.
Small-batch processing is one way of reinfusing humanity back into the process. It discourages companies from hoarding hundreds or thousands of applications and pitting those applicants against one another (“May the odds be forever in your favor”), infuses dignity back into the process and saves hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars.
And just as importantly, it works. We find ourselves considering exceptional people who never would have been identified by the Hunger Games model, getting them into the role faster and keeping them longer.
E. Treat all candidates with respect. They’re not appealing to us for a job, they’re considering us as a work partner. Ask ourselves whether people are treated respectfully as if we’d be lucky to have them, or disrespectfully as if we’re doing them a favor simply by acknowledging them. Are they kept updated? Is our tone considerate or haughty? Do we use their chosen name, pronouns and titles?
Are we committed to responding personally, promptly and respectfully to each person who makes a good faith effort to apply and to finding ways to foster an ongoing relationship with them? This applies equally to how we treat their privacy. Any applicant tracking system that doesn’t treat applicants’ privacy as a fundamental right is one no company should be using. Looking for a job is not, in any way, an abdication of this right.
We can put stringent privacy protocols in place, including not requiring the submission of any sensitive information (legal name, government ID, mailing address, references, etc.) at the onset, plainly committing to not selling or sharing their personal information with any third parties (including policing agencies who are increasingly buying up batches of information it would be illegal for them to search for), plus, encrypting their data and expunging information about candidates we don’t advance and ending practices like searching for their social media footprint or rifling through their personal lives.
Removing Obstacles
Portentia Workforce specializes in placements of neurodiverse candidates (conditions ranging from dyslexia and ADHD to OCD and epilepsy, mania, depression, schizophrenia, dyslexia and across the autism spectrum); a group that, according to their research, represents 1/4th of today’s workforce. Portentia, through their work, opens our eyes to yet another way we’re overlooking immensely talented contributors.
Every company should ask itself, “What changes do we need to make to remove obstacles that prevent potential team members, whether ethnic or lower-income or clients of a company like Portentia from applying?” Because when we do, we’re the ones who benefit.
3. Interview for partners, not workers.
The Pastry Project is just one example of how it’s possible to teach people with no expertise whatsoever in a specialized trade, to master it.
In their case, the nonprofit trains people to become professional bakers. Imagine how they would describe the skills or capabilities they consider to be absolutely essential. Or, there’s my friend, Dieter, who, at one time, was one of the most famous celebrity ministers/musicians in the country. Dieter led his high school team to state finals in soccer and was, like me, a marathoner. He’d go on to found and lead a church that thousands attended each Sunday and was an Elton John-caliber pianist.
Then, in 2008, Dieter had a stroke one night in his sleep; one that left him unable to speak, and paralyzed on his right side. He’s right-handed. Dieter went from top of his game to having to learn to walk and talk all over again. The only job he could get was as a crossing guard. Then, a friend who was a manager at a Bay Area Trader Joe’s hired Dieter. At the time, he could barely walk and had a ready vocabulary of perhaps 20 words. But this manager believed in Dieter and knew that he had much to offer.
And Dieter did. He would prove himself to be one of the hardest workers this manager had ever hired. He’d take on tasks that others felt were beneath them — everything from cleaning up spills to unclogging toilets. But even more profound was his impact on the work environment. Everyone loved working with Dieter, and he found himself being as much of a pastor to his fellow Trader Joe’s co-workers as he’d been to his congregation.
People came to him to talk about their problems and to get moral support. They looked to him and were inspired by his indomitable positive attitude. And that made that Trader Joe’s much more than a place to work, but both a community and a family. When Dieter opted to move back to Portland, his hometown, during his father’s final years, the store manager called the Trader Joe’s in Portland and told them they’d be nuts not to hire Dieter. He got offers from every Portland location.
When he got married a few years ago, it looked to me like every person from the store where Dieter worked was present at the reception, and a number of them drove up from the Bay Area. Then, there’s the same-sex, interracial veteran couple in New York City, both of whom were wounded while serving, who launched their own four-table restaurant, publicized entirely by word-of-mouth, out of their home.
The Euro-American partner, who’d lost the use of his legs, was the chef, whereas the African American partner, who’d been blinded, was combination host, server, and entertainer (he’d play the piano, sing and interact with dinner guests after the food had been served). And there’s the SF Bay Area Asian American soccer mom, who, despite lacking arms, does everything any other mother does, including driving, grocery shopping and actually coaching the soccer team (she’s an extraordinary soccer player).
In every case, traditional interview processes would have rejected these people from roles they’d turn out to be excellent at if they weren’t ignored altogether. The key to correcting this is self-awareness; recognizing that whatever we create is almost certainly biased, then, committing to making it less biased — in the same way that the union we the people have formed is imperfect, but that we’re committed to making it more perfect. Below are four ways we can stop looking for workers and find partners:
A. Walk back ever-escalating complexity. Eliminate the need for professionals who specialize in turning resumes into marketing pieces or including just the right wording to make it past screening algorithms. We think they’re saving us time, but what they’re really doing is overlooking great contributors. A Hodes’ Healthcare study that had mystery job candidates submit “perfect resumes” found that only 12% of these “ideal candidates” actually received a call-back. And that’s before getting to the role discrimination played in obscuring the hiring process in the first place.
B. Recognize that, by and large, interviews don’t work. As I mentioned above, multiple studies reveal that, from hourly employees to CEOs, the new hire failure rate ranges between 50% and 82%. The problem is not so much that we’re doing interviews poorly, though that’s part of it. The bigger issue is that with an interview, we’re hiring for something that hasn’t happened yet. And predicting the future, no matter the circumstances is notoriously difficult, and the chances of getting it right diminish the more demands we place on the process. That’s why sticking with what’s truly essential matters.
Then, there’s the inherent validity issue of interviews themselves. Turns out that the qualities that enable a person to perform well in an interview are not the same ones that make a person a great team member. Some organizations are shifting toward things like situational interviews (requiring candidates to react to work-related scenarios) and “job auditions” in hopes of making the process more effective. And evidence suggests that they do, in fact, help reduce the degree to which our personal biases skew the process.
But by creating even more distance between people, they fall prey to an equally significant problem; they focus us even more so on candidates who audition well, or who can perform that one task spectacularly while we overlook outstanding people who simply don’t perform well in contrived settings, or who have a whole range of other invaluable skills we can only discover by listening to them.
C. Put our empathy to work. Talk to people. Build in ways that candidates themselves can take the lead — letting them tell us who they are and about the contributions their diversity enables them to bring — ones we never would have thought to even assess for. Instead of superstar strengths, look for ways they can make the team stronger and more effective.
Use the ways in which we ourselves are diverse to sensitize us to the process — i.e. — what would it take to set us immediately at ease if we were interviewing, and just as importantly, what would cause us anxiety? Put yourself in their shoes. What would it be like to be a Muslim woman interviewed by a panel of suited Anglo Protestant men? Can an introvert or someone with a stutter be made comfortable and set at ease?
Ask yourself, “Is our process assessing their capabilities or their ability to answer interview questions?” Practical steps would be letting people know beforehand the kinds of topics the conversation will cover so that the process is less of a pop quiz, and steering clear of questions that require culturally nuanced answers like, “What’s your biggest shortcoming?”
D. Recognize how an interviewer’s own personal assumptions can skew interview outcomes and counteract them. Given that we’re naturally drawn to people with whom we find affinity, it falls to us, not them, to build those bridges and find those points of human connection with everyone. We can easily gravitate toward people we find it effortless to talk with simply because of the many things we have in common. We might not be able to jettison all our biases and assumptions, but we can learn to be aware of them, and by doing so, counteract them.
Above all, recognize that you’re not just choosing them, they’re choosing you. Give them reasons to do so.
4. Design your people systems for actual people.
24-year-old D’Monterrio Gibson, a uniformed Fed Ex worker, was shot at by two white-identifying men while delivering packages. Management not only neglected to immediately involve the police, but they also placed D’Monterrio on the same route the next day. When he refused, he was placed on unpaid leave. Though the company would make moves to rectify the situation (including moving D’Monterrio from unpaid to paid leave), the initial people services lapses are huge enough to drive a Fed Ex truck through.
Most companies approach HR with a production mentality. The mindset, a vestige of our past, still treats people as instruments, hands to pick the cotton, or, in manufacturing, expecting people to be grateful for having a job at all. “After all,” we say to ourselves, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Even the name “Human Resources” which speaks to how we often reduce people down to raw materials, to their labor, is itself a holdover from the slave plantation, the same place many of the function’s protocols were created and perfected. Plantation owners worked out the optimal number of hours and days a slave could work over long periods of time. They originated the use of time-motion studies and regimentation through clocks, bells, and cadence. And they pioneered all manner of labor innovations, from field organization that maximized harvest yields to systems of vertical reporting that would evolve into what we know today as line management.
But that’s also the problem. The old framing, built on the assumption that only some of us matter, is unsustainable in the non-majority society we’re becoming. In everything from inclusive hiring to wage sufficiency, from shared ownership to jobs one can retire from, we can do better than we’ve done in the past. At the same time, doing better is less about the big changes, the grand gestures than the small consistent ones like switching from HR (“Human Resources”) to HR (“Human Resourcing”), from something we do to people, to something we do for them.
This is what inclusive organizations do: they rethink all aspects of their talent system, from its name to its impact on human lives. Below are five specific areas to consider:
A. Build in flexibility. The Mad Men days, ones where the workplace is populated by married, heterosexual males with a wife who can run things on the home front, are over. Today’s workforce requires that companies rethink expectations and make workplace flexibility the new normal. It starts with how we envision the roles in the first place. Recognize how the same role can be adjusted for, say, an Assistant Director, Director, or Senior Director; which expands the talent pool.
Or, we can change how the role is structured, adopting role-splitting (dividing duties) or role-sharing (breaking it into two or more part-time positions), which opens the field to those who can’t do full-time, including single parents, seniors, students, people with disabilities and people doing work like serving in the National Guard or state legislature. For our part, we’re freed from the need to find that mythical candidate that brings everything that role needs. In other words, the more flexibility we build in, the more we benefit.
B. Promote personal well-being. Prioritizing wellness starts with recognizing that almost everyone will face a serious emotional or psychological crisis at some point in their career. When that inevitably happens, our company’s attitude, whether going through this is normalized or stigmatized can significantly increase or decrease the severity and longevity of the crisis. It’s also the moment when we either lose great people or keep them.
But it’s not just about the impact on employees’ lives. A 2018 American Psychological Association analysis found that the estimated cost of job stress nationwide may be as much as $187 billion, with 70% to 90% of those losses resulting from declines in productivity. Then, there’s the impact of short job tenures (18 months), long-standing vacancies (6 months) and all the time spent constantly filling those vacancies; all of which could be radically reduced simply by treating people as people.
C. Adjust employer expectations. It must have been revolutionary when Henry Ford, in 1926, introduced the five-day, eight-hour and $5-per-day workweek. Prior to that watershed moment, a gig based on a six-day, nine-hour and $2.25 per day workweek was considered a good one. That one change changed the work world.
Today, we’re in the midst of a similar revolution, one driven by unprecedented increases in productivity due to automation, AI and other forms of technology. As such, Time magazine named 4 Day Week Global, the nonprofit advocating for a nationwide shift to a four-day work week one of its 100 most influential companies of 2023.
Then, there’s how work assignments are classified. Given laws that lock people out of opportunities to make a living due to the lack of proper documentation, one thing that companies can do is determine which positions can be filled by an independent contractor or otherwise outsourced. Right now, about half the workforce of the typical tech company fits this criteria. Doing so allows people who can’t get traditional positions to still find meaningful work.
D. Recognize personal development as professional development. We talk a lot about professional development. But in reality, anything that enriches a person’s well-being will have a spillover effect at work. Taking dancing improves their health, elevates their mood and expands their network. A film class makes them a better storyteller and enables them to give invaluable feedback on the company’s advertising and communication efforts. And so forth.
E. Accommodate life changes. A not-insubstantial amount of turnover occurs due to changes in team members’ home lives. Anything from needing to spend more time with the children to caring for an aging parent, from going back to school to needing more personal life balance can trigger a need to downshift to a lower-level position, move to consultant/advisor status or reduce one’s hours. Companies structured to help people resolve these inevitable conflicts engender loyalty and keep great people longer.
5. Create a culture where everyone has value.
Margaret Heffernan, in a TED Talk titled, Forget the Pecking Order at Work, references research conducted by evolutionary biologist William Muir, who, in an experiment, created two groups of chickens — one with a variety of hens, ranging from below-average to above-average in egg-laying capabilities, and another with only those with the highest egg-laying capabilities, described as “Super Chickens”.
On every measure, from egg-laying to the well-being of the chickens themselves, the former outperformed the latter. In fact, of the large Super Chicken flock, only three were still alive at the end of the study. All others had been pecked to death. The research teaches us an indispensable lesson: super chickens and their human counterparts have been primed to function the same way — to achieve their success by suppressing the productivity of others. When the thing that matters is individual performance, the most likely results are, according to Margaret Heffernan, “aggression, dysfunction and waste”.
This was supported by a 2010 MIT study which showed that a group’s “collective intelligence” correlated neither with the individual with the highest IQ nor with groups with the highest aggregate IQ. Turns out, the groups that were the most effective problem-solvers, the most productive and creative had three things in common; they were high in social sensitivity, they were rich in diversity, and they functioned in a manner where all participated and everyone mattered. But this is neither the culture that most companies foster nor is it much of a consideration in staffing decisions.
It was in 1997 that McKinsey and Company declared what the consulting firm called a “War for Talent”, advising companies to shift their recruiting focus from team players and personal traits like loyalty, to “the best and the brightest.” This declaration was, in many ways, an affirmation of so-called “rank and yank” policies originated by people like Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric in the 80s, and that would become increasingly popular across corporate America.
In GE’s case, Welch ranked all managers, then fired whoever was among the bottom 10% — irrespective of their absolute performance, and with no regard for their commitment to the company, their contributions to overall company success, etc. And that’s before getting to the abject subjectivity of the rankings themselves. For Welch, “A” players were perceived by their supervisors to be filled with passion, open to ideas from anywhere, blessed with much “runway” ahead of them, and that they possessed charisma and a number of other extroverted traits.
McKinsey suggested that companies should take a similar approach; investing in “A” players, developing “B” players, and moving quickly to get rid of “C” players. It soon became clear, however, that this approach was disastrous; derailing productivity and poisoning company culture. And not unlike with clusters of super chickens, the damage was almost fatal. This is but one of many ways our organizational cultures can become toxic — places where people are both less productive and don’t want to stay. Others include:
A. Lack of diversity among decision-makers — It’s not enough to have diverse customers or workers in the breakroom. The diversity present in the broader community must also be represented in the executive suite and the boardroom, among focus group members and shareholders. And that’s not just for their sake, it’s for ours. Because barring them from the table means that the vital insights they hold are also missing.
But even when diversity is present, it can be effectively muted by a culture that forces conformity at the expense of creativity. A better approach is focusing on what could be called “crowd intelligence”, which, like crowdfunding, aggregates and integrates contributions from all kinds of sources to achieve goals that aren’t reachable through traditional means.
B. Not caring — a lack of regard for the wellbeing of the people who make our existence possible; from the workers who make us great and their families, the people who give their lives meaning, to the customers who choose us and the communities who believe in us. CSR (corporate social responsibility) isn’t just about our impact on the world; it’s about our own well being. Companies that take it seriously are stronger, more sustainable, and are far better at attracting and retaining diversity.
Most companies, if they were paying attention, would have plenty of warning with respect to the kinds of crises that could sink them. It starts in vulnerable places like among underrepresented workers or lower-income customers, before spreading everywhere. The key is simple; create safe forums for them to tell us what’s not working. Engagement surveys with items like, “I feel valued and respected”, “Everyone is treated fairly here”, or “My voice is heard”, would have provided vital information long before the problem grew unmanageable. Hospitals that want to become places that serve everyone well should survey those on the margins — people with Medicaid, who are ethnic minority or LGBTQ+, or some combination thereof.
C. Social dysfunction — Allowing micro-aggressions, subtle harassment, disrespect, personal attacks, and casual verbal violence, then accusing people of being “too sensitive” when they bring it to our attention. Expecting salaried workers to work more than full-time, including evenings and weekends, discouraging workers from taking vacations, and offering things like paid leave, but penalizing anyone who utilizes them.
Requiring stringent adherence to rank and titles, including who can make a suggestion, give feedback or express their opinion. Punishing workers who blow the whistle, report harassment, seek to unionize or simply “forget their place”. Behaviors that short-circuit dialogue and, as a result, eliminate productive problem-solving.
D. Lack of community — There are all manner of reasons why people might need to leave, from school to family, from life transitions to personal pursuits. As much as possible, become a place they’ll miss and a community they’ll want to remain part of. Organizations that work to engender loyalty also have strong boomerang employee rates — people who circle back to them — and they’re able to spread the word about jobs far faster and more extensively.
Even when the separation is employer-initiated, in many cases, it’s about fit, not fault. Most shortcomings can be corrected with timely, constructive feedback; both from us to them, and just as importantly, them to us. Our efforts over recent years to reform policing provide us with ample evidence that infusing more humanity into our processes works.
6. Pay wages people can live on.
Significant attention has been given to soaring executive compensation, and to the growing distance between the highest-paid and lowest-paid workers in the company. And as important as this is (especially when executive comp is skyrocketing while those same companies insist that paying the bottom rung more would ruin them), wage disparity isn’t the elephant in the room. It’s wage insufficiency; full-time jobs that pay less than one can live on without outside help. Wage disparity is a relative measure. But wage insufficiency is an absolute measure; one that almost exclusively affects the working poor.
Solving it is rather simple: Benchmark what it takes for a full-time worker, working no overtime, to live a modest, stable life without the added assistance of food banks, free clinics and the like. Set that as the salary for your company’s lowest-paid worker. Then, build up from there. Though it might seem counter-intuitive, paying people more and paying them fairly might be one of the best investments an organization can make. First, it engenders loyalty and reduces turnover, which also reduces the length of time positions are left vacant and the costs involved in filling them. Second, it enhances our reputation in the community, which makes recruiting easier.
And third, it’s a down payment on our own sustainability. Before the Great Depression, even as productivity rose, few manufacturers shared those gains with workers, which meant that few workers could afford to purchase the products they spent all day making. This led to a glut of automobiles and televisions, record players and refrigerators, which, in an economy that runs on consumer spending, would turn out to be devastating. Below are ways we can do better:
A. Establish a Minimum Viable Income (MVI) metric for the lowest-paid worker in your organization and pay them accordingly. Make that your compensation baseline. To give a sense of what, practically, this means, below is information pulled from MIT’s living wage calculator indicating what it would take for a three-person (one adult, two children) household to sustainably subsist, unaided.
But before reviewing it, it’s important to understand what’s included in the calculation and what isn’t. The instrument’s creators describe it this way: “In general, it is assumed that families select the lowest cost option that enables them to meet each of these basic needs at a minimum but adequate level. As such, the living wage does not budget for eating out at a restaurant or meals that aren’t prepared at home; leisure time, holidays, or unpaid vacations; or savings, retirement, and other long-term financial investments.”
Birmingham, AL — $28.44/hour or $59,165 before taxes/$49,813 after taxes
Fresno, CA — $32.18/hour or $66,944 before taxes/$55,610 after taxes
Louisville, KY — $29.59/hour or $61,548 before taxes/$51,602 after taxes
Boston, MA — $38.18/hour or $79,414 before taxes/$69,692 after taxes
Portland, OR — $35.53/hour or $73,909 before taxes/$60,523 after taxes
B. Make everyone a co-owner. Something fundamentally shifts when workers also become owners. They’re now personally invested in the company’s success, which impacts everything from the effort people put in, to our willingness to do things that aren’t explicitly our job. The same thing happens in nonprofits when employees are folded into the governance structure and represented on the board and its committees.
In this environment, supervisors are transformed into facilitators — people tasked with helping each team member to bring their best to the work and to have the things they need. Feedback becomes both routine and constructive, a way of helping people do the thing they already want to do anyway. Because the hierarchy has been flattened, everyone has a voice, and because feedback has been decoupled from compensation, the conversations can be focused on one thing — improving organizational performance.
Award everyone, from lowest to highest paid, from employees to contractors and gig workers, equity that travels with them throughout their career and that’s benchmarked to their salary. There are a number of ways to do this, from stock options to companies like Bob’s Red Mill that have transitioned to employee-owned models, to 401Ks and 403Bs.
Coffee giant Starbucks provides another powerful example of how employees can be included in company ownership. Founder Howard Schultz insisted on shared ownership from the company’s inception, and in 1991, they began offering employees an ownership stake in the form of their board-managed program, “Bean Stock”. Awarded to all Starbucks employees (or at Starbucks, “partners”), since inception, the program has awarded over $1.2 billion in shares to employees. In addition, they offer a 401(k) retirement plan that includes a generous company match, and they offer discounted company stock (S.I.P.).
C. Eliminate comp disparity. Start by compensating board members, even nonprofit boards, would expand the field of people who could add significantly to an organization’s effectiveness, but who cannot afford to divert hours away from work. People who don’t need it could simply request a $1 salary or donate it back to the organization.
Within companies, studies show that minorities and women are less comfortable negotiating for a higher salary. But they also shouldn’t need to be good at this. There is a fair rate of pay for the work, irrespective of past salaries, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or haggling skills. Base compensation solely on current position and one’s ability to do the job.
D. Decouple pay and performance reviews. Today, promotions and year-end bonuses are often tied to reviews. But even the appraisal process is skewed, by the selection bias inherent in the metrics we focus on, by requiring that workers list their accomplishments (which is less of a measure of what they actually contributed and more of a measure of how well they can talk themselves up), and even simply by highlighting individual achievements (which competitive cultures tend to focus on), rather than contributions to collective success (the focus of cooperative cultures).
7. Treat worker benefits as an investment in your organization’s future.
In other places, I’ve talked about my uncle Don, who’s eight years older than me. Don still lives in Birmingham. Since I was raised by Don’s parents, he and his twin brother Ron, who died young, and I were all practically brothers. From teenage on, Don would take whatever work was available to an African American man in Alabama with an associate’s degree in radio and TV repair.
I describe in Me and Mary how, one summer when I was in high school, Willie James, Don’s older brother by a decade, got us both jobs working at a construction site cleaning mortar off old bricks for 3 cents per brick, and in Don and the Wallet, I describe his gig working as a theater attendant; picking up in between screenings. The manager decided to hire his grandson, and that led Don to Walmart, where he would work unloading trucks for the next 20+ years.
Over that time, he was paid poverty wages and was provided no health insurance. Nor, was he provided sick leave or any kind of retirement provision. By the early 90s, Don’s back was so damaged that for his last few years, he worked while wearing a brace that extended from his neck down to his hips. Practices like these would lead to a 2014 judgment in favor of Walmart workers for a whopping $188 Million.
The good news is that the retailer’s exploitative practices have been covered extensively in the media. But the bad news is that this focus on one company has blinded us to how widespread such practices are. Because Walmart’s policies aren’t the exception. They’re the rule. Take Target, which, over that same period, quietly settled a half-dozen employee lawsuits; most of which were tied to worker classification.
There have been multiple cases of employees who should have been paid hourly, but who were instead classified as exempt; which meant that though they routinely worked 50 hours per week, they were only paid for 40. And at low wages. Then, there’s high-end retailer, Nordstrom, known for its legendary customer service. The company settled a lawsuit where it was accused of failing to pay both minimum wage and overtime pay.
In 2015, Amazon advertised a driver program that promised drivers between $18 and $25 per hour plus tips to make deliveries. The following year, however, according to the FTC, the company “secretly reduced its own contribution to drivers’ pay” and used customer tips to make up the difference. The case report stated that nearly a third of drivers’ tips were withheld. Amazon, in June 2021, agreed to settle for $61.7 million; the full amount withheld from drivers, and that would be returned to them.
And on it continues from fast food’s denial of benefits to companies like IBM’s obliteration of pensions to tech companies who only provide stock options to senior-level employees. Though we often don’t realize it, more than a third of our total effective income, at least for most of us, is delivered through benefits; whether vacation or workers comp, employer-paid taxes or retirement contributions, sick leave or holidays. Any company truly interested in promoting fairness could begin by analyzing which benefits are being used by whom, and how this translates into effective income.
For instance, Edward Executive is awarded all manner of perks that Wilma Worker is not; everything from a company car to outplacement services. She makes a lesser salary but has to pay extra for things that Edward gets for free. Getting benefits right starts with identifying who we had in mind when the platform was built, and rethinking it so that it’s both equitable and inclusive of everyone. Below are seven ways we can do that:
A. Adopt a cafeteria approach. Chances are, Wilma Worker can’t say, afford a pet, which means she won’t be using the free pet insurance the company provides. However, she could benefit from coverage of summer enrichment programs for her kids. A cafeteria structure that allocated certain dollar amounts to both Edward and Wilma that they could apply to the benefits that best serve them would better meet everyone’s needs.
B. Adjust how insurances work. Most companies build their policies for Edward; fully covering his wife and children. But that disadvantages Wilma, who doesn’t have a wife (so doesn’t benefit from spousal coverage). She does, however, have a mother who lives with her and helps care for the kids. Wilma needs to pay an additional amount — out of her salary — to have a non-spousal family member covered by her insurance. Both Edward’s additional benefit and Wilma’s additional cost can easily result in an effective income difference of over $1,500/mo for health insurance alone.
C. Make paid leave equitable. Companies are required by law to offer six weeks paid maternity leave, and today, many offer some form of paid paternity leave, including for adoptions. But there’s no comparable provision for a single parent to care for the sick child they already have, or for a childless employee to care for aging parents, or for those who need paid personal leave for some other reason, including their own wellness.
Should not a 60-year-old worker who will never be a candidate for maternity/paternity leave, or the 1 in 4 workers living in single-person households not have access to comparable benefits, ones that could both enhance their well-being and lengthen their tenure? This is especially important when we take into account the costs involved in bringing people on and the sheer amount of luck involved in finding the right people in the first place.
D. Provide proportionate benefits for part-time employees. Many companies only offer benefits to employees that pass a threshold of weekly hours worked, and until they pass that threshold, they’re ineligible for all but the most basic benefits like workers’ comp. Doing so allows employers to avoid providing benefits simply by limiting the number of full-time hires they make. So people being paid at or near minimum wage are forced to take two part-time jobs; neither of which provide them with ample benefits. Employers can make work fairer by prorating benefit payouts based on FTE (full-time equivalency). Employees working .25 FTE should be eligible for benefits comparable to hours worked.
E. Pay independent contractors, freelancers and gig workers more. In addition to health/life insurance, vacation, paid leave and retirement, employers cover everything from office space and utilities to equipment and supplies to furnishings, computers and cell phones for employees.
But non-employee workers, which, for most tech companies, encompass half their workforce (not to mention ride-share companies and others whose entire business model relies on gig workers), are on their own, including covering workers’ comp and disability, fully funding their own retirement and fully covering the portion of taxes like FICA and Social Security. An effective fairness lens requires that we pay these workers a premium to cover all the benefits they’re not getting as employees.
F. Constantly recalibrate our offerings. Almost all low-wage workers could afford to service a mortgage if they could cover the down payment. They don’t have elderly relatives who can provide such a huge sum, nor do their salaries allow them to save it. Homeownership assistance is but one example of how benefits could be tailored to support the workers who need it most. Personal holidays would allow religious minorities to take off for important occasions without using vacation time.
NYC organizations routinely make discounted subway passes available to employees. And companies are increasingly offering DCFSAs (dependent care flexible spending accounts), which allow people to cover both childcare and eldercare. All four are examples of how we can recalibrate our benefits offerings to better fit employees’ needs.
G. Make retirement possible. Every worker who spends a career working should be able to retire and live out the rest of their lives near the standard of living they had while working. But that’s not the future for most of our workforce. In fact, the median retirement savings for all middle-income workers across the US is only $60,000; approximately 5% of what they need. And that’s not the worst of it. Lower-income workers, who constitute nearly half the workforce, have no retirement savings at all. This, given aging Boomers and Xers, is a catastrophe in the making.
But there’s also an opportunity here. Universal employer retirement contributions, added to an account that’s set up to travel with the individual, and with contributions set at levels that will allow everyone to retire would not only eliminate the looming crisis; it would go a long ways toward eliminating intergenerational poverty altogether.
Change
Don’t spend your precious time asking “Why isn’t the world a better place?” It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is, “How can I make it better?” To that there is an answer.” — Leo Buscaglia
Imagine growing up within the institution of slavery; not as a slave, but as a slave owner. Imagine playing, at five years old, with your best friend, and not understanding why he calls you “Massuh John”, but you’re instructed to call him, just “Jim”. You don’t know why. You don’t understand it when at eight years old, Jim now has to work in the field while you go to school, or why he can’t come to the house to play soldiers anymore. You’re also told that you and he have the same father, but also that he is your family’s property, and that he will one day belong to you; be your own personal slave.
You find yourself wondering if the entire world is like this, or if this is the life that Jim, your best friend and actual brother wants. You know it’s less than he deserves. And though you’re told this is normal; the way God ordained things, there’s something, somewhere in the recesses of your soul that refuses to remain quiet. You find yourself asking questions of your parents, only to have them affirm to you that the world is as it should be. But that feeling, like an itch you can’t scratch, remains.
You start to see things — small things — that contradict the narrative (if the slaves are so happy, why did old Joe get beat when he ran away?) You ignore them and get on with the business of learning the family business, and for the most part, monotony, tradition and social pressure can shout louder than the voice. The sermons at church reinforce your righteousness, as does the community.
You find yourself aspiring to be a “good” slave owner; not one of those who overworks his slaves or starves them. But, still, that voice persists, and the small contradictions continue to accumulate; becoming almost impossible to ignore. And in that moment, you, like all of us, are faced with a choice; double down on the narrative you’ve been told all your life and commit to it heart and soul, or change.
But changing involves walking away; not just from an ideology, but from an entire way of life. It requires determining that your ma and pa, the people who taught you everything, who, while they might otherwise be good people, are fundamentally wrong on this. It requires action, either leaving that entire life behind, or staying and overseeing the dismantling of everything the last several generations have built, and letting the wealth tied up in the person of slaves simply walk off the farm.
And it likely requires letting go of the farm itself and going against every social institution that has been built to protect and perpetuate this way of life. It involves social punishment, and being downgraded, and being branded a traitor. In other words, it constitutes a profound sense of loss, on virtually every level.
This was the journey of a number of Anglos who went from being slave-owners to being abolitionists, including the original Cassius M Clay. Born to Sally and Green Clay, Cassius’ father was one of the wealthiest men in Kentucky. He was a general in the American Revolutionary War, a prominent land-holder and slave owner, and a politician. This was the home, and the world, that Cassius was born into.
Like anyone, the inconsistencies and holes in the narrative would have presented themselves to Cassius at multiple points since childhood, but it would be while hearing William Lloyd Garrison speak at Yale University in 1831, that things would finally coalesce. In response, Cassius would free his slaves and pay them for lost wages, then, dedicate his life, from then on, to the abolitionist cause. He would then go on to a career in Congress, tirelessly fighting to abolish slavery through political means including urging President Lincoln to issue the unprecedented Emancipation Proclamation.
One Kentucky freedman was so appreciative of what Cassius had done that he, lacking a last name of his own, would name his son Cassius Clay in the original’s honor. That Cassius Clay would himself, have a son, whom he’d name Cassius Clay Jr.; the same Cassius Clay who became one of the greatest boxers of all time, though he is better known by the name he adopted after converting to Islam — Muhammad Ali — “The Greatest”.
“Don’t be afraid to let it show,” Cyndi sang, “your true colors.” That’s what Cassius and so many other abolitionists did, and what everyone who has changed the world for the better has done. This is the same journey that organizations undertake, shifting from seeing people as no more than their labor, their output, to seeing their true colors. Like my friend Clarettia and the Fab Five, entire companies can take ordinary gifts and use them for extraordinary purposes.
Like Henry Ford did, or the folk at Portentia Workforce and Trader Joe’s do, like my friend Steven’s employers did and the folk at the Pastry Project do, we can treat people like they matter. We can take to heart the lessons Margaret Heffernan taught us about super chickens and follow the example of the trucking company my sister worked for. In all manner of ways, we can make our people processes work for everyone. And by doing so, it’s not just their true colors that shine through, beautiful, like a rainbow. It’s our own.
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The DEI Chronicles is a five-part series about diversity, equity and inclusion, and the importance of us incorporating these virtues into every aspect of our society if we want to become a nation that can endure. ”Beautiful, Like a Rainbow” is the fifth article in the series.
RD Moore is an artist, minister, lifelong social activist, emancipationist and founder of the Mary Moore Institute for Diversity, Humanity & Social Justice (MMI). He credits the people who crossed his path starting in his formative years in post-Civil Rights-era Birmingham for the person he’d become and for his unyielding faith in who we can be together. Known for his intimate storytelling and insightful understanding, his work continues to explore that fertile space where diversity, spirituality and humanity all intersect. His blog, Letters from a Birmingham Boy, can be found here.