Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 459. How to Recruit and Empwer a Diverse Team (Replay) - Kishshana Palmer

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459. How to Recruit and Empwer a Diverse Team (Replay) - Kishshana Palmer · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, y'all, I want to take you back to the day that we got to meet in person for the first time, keshana Palmer.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: She's somebody we had followed for a while, but the first time she came into our podcast doors, the conversation that she brought to us visibly like made the mic drop over and over again, and I'm so excited to relift that conversation today, as we're leaning into deeper discussions about diversity, equity, inclusion.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It has to start at like how we're even recruiting and empowering a diverse team, and that looks like everything from how we are recruiting talent and how we're building policies and procedures to support the growth and the success of those team members as they come in.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Keshana brings all the wisdom, and I can't wait for you to listen to this episode and hear what your takeaways are.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John and I'm Becky, and this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Non-profits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the good community.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Welcome, welcome.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Howdy Becky.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: We're excited.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we've been counting down the moments for this interview.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: So we talked about this guest before we ever launched our first episode, like as someone that we would like to get an ungettable get list.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And so today we are so blessed and humbled to bring on Keshana Palmer.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: And you're probably saying, well, some people may know her, but who is Keshana Palmer?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And she is a living legend and let me like give a little bio on her.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Not only is she a national speaker, a trainer and a coach with 17 years in fundraising, marketing and talent management, but she founded the rooted collaborative, which is like this global online community for women of color and fundraising, which we are going to dive into that and I'm so excited to explore it a little bit more.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: She's also the author of a really amazing book called hey, I'm New here, which I love that title.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: She's about to launch a podcast in January called a shot of vitamin K.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: She's CFRE.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: She's a board source certified governance trainer.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Didn't even know that was a thing and, at the end of the day, she's just somebody who that you go to when you want to help grow, find and retain people on your team, so she knows all about raising money.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: She calls herself the philanthropic fairy godmother that people need to have on speed dial and her work really just isn't limited to organization.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: She's also coach of social good professionals and she's just finding ways to put more kindness and goodness into the world.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: She has got so much energy, her lipstick is on point and I want to welcome our New York City girl from the Outer Banks, the Queens, to the podcast Welcome.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Keshana hey, hey come on, come on back.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: That was an introduction, Girl.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I just read what you gave us and it was amazing.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: I can't really do need to update that darn thing.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So give us a little bit of background on how, on your story.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: We always like to give people a chance to shout out to their alma mater and tell us how you got into fundraising and nonprofit.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Absolutely so I am.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: I think it's important for folks to know I'm first gen American.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: My family is from Jamaica, West Indies, and young I didn't even know I was American until I went to college.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Oh my.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: God, I think we need that story.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is that story that?
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: story before we go any further.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: So you know, when you grow up from in an island or even some place, that you have an accent coming into the US, there's just certain words that you pronounce differently, and so one of those words is what we would now say comfortable.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Growing up, I would say comfortable, and I would also like that better, as opposed to vegetable and so forth and so on.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And so I went to college.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I went to Bentley, then college, now Bentley University, up in Waltham, massachusetts, and I remember being in a cafeteria with lots of other first years just talking about where we were from, and I was like you know, I'm Jamaican.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: They were like oh, what part of Jamaica were you born in?
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And nobody ever asked me that in New York City.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: And I was like I'm burning Queens.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And they were like you're not Jamaican, you're American.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: And I was like what?
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: And I was like absolutely not.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: It was the first time that I had sort of been introduced that you can be culturally one thing even if you're from someplace else, and it was one of the first times that I was introduced to the notion that as a black woman y'all know I'm black, right.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: So I have to ask sometimes I'm like sometimes I'm people's only black friend.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: I just want you to know.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: No, we want you to be in our massive tribe of multicultural, diverse family.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, we would bring all the ties into the storehouse.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: So you know, the reality is that a lot of times when you're thinking about identity, it's really important to kind of name how you see yourself and how you sort of show up in the world, because it does actually shape your values.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: So I went to undergraduate for business school.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: I got my MBA right out of undergrad.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I worked in investment banking briefly over in London and I came home y'all because my goal in life was to be married with children.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: There's a TV show about that.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: And so I did that too.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: But I came back home and decided that I didn't want to work on Wall Street, and so I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I actually don't even really remember applying for my first nonprofit job.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Even to this day I'm always like God, what number job was that?
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: 1600.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: And okay, and so I was a grant writer, and I did not know that during my final interview, the team made a bet on how long I would last at that organization in that role.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Not cool.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: They have let me in on the bet because I like to win, yeah.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: So I didn't know that until I left three and a half years later, but, needless to say, no one won that bet because no one bet on me for that long, because they were like, what is she doing here?
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: But I realized very early on in my career one I was not meant to be sitting at a desk writing anybody's any grant, but it is how I cut my teeth in understanding how to use narrative to be able to get folks to believe, and I had always been a really good writer.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: But I think that being able to translate that to a very specific type of business writing was so critical, really, really early on.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: And so I was able to marry my ability to write with my love of people yell, I'm newsy, I'm not even nosy, I'm news, and so, and my ability to get out and get people to trust me, to help executive directors at this huge decentralized agency I used to work for really go from.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, how am I going to make sure that Becky and that Julie are not losing their job?
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Therefore, I need to find money and think about what are the outcomes that I'm really seeking to achieve in this community and that I have a team.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: That's amazing.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: They can get that done, like just really thinking about impact from a different perspective as opposed to from an output perspective, and getting folks to flip their books from being in the red constantly chasing their next grant to really thinking proactively about how to leverage their mission, their impact positioning in their community to be able to do some real good.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: And that's how I came into fundraising.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: Y'all.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I didn't know it was a thing.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I've always raised money.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: In fact, my nickname in junior high school is Cash Diggy.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: And listen, I was selling math tests and study homework swap offs and all the non-cool kids in the class I was in because I was a cool nerd, y'all straight A student I want you to know who couldn't get any play.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: I was able to transition them to the play portion of the program through my program of exchange for work.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Don't tell my junior high school teachers they'd be very sad, but making money before I started working in high school and so to this day, cash rules everything around me by Lutang is my fight song Cash Diggy we are no longer going to call Kishana she's no longer KP.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: She is cash Diggy right here, innovating, being an entrepreneur while still maintaining her grades.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Good on you.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: We don't quite know how that shows up in our regular everyday life, some of us instinctively, some of us by habit, but by and large we want to be seen and we want to be heard and we want to be in some version of a community.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: And I did not know that then at 22, but I know it now season in the crop pot of life.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: My skin looks very clear.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: If you haven't seen me, go on my Instagram, y'all will see I have good skincare.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Hey, they can get on YouTube and watch you right now live.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't know then that that those themes would translate to now.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: So that's really how I got into nonprofit work and into my work as a career fundraiser or a marketer, and I haven't looked back.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's a lot of jumping off points, but one thing I want to lift because we talk about this and I don't think a lot enough people talk about this but you said you wanted to use narrative to get people to believe, and to us, that is the game changer, because you're trying to get believers.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You're not trying to just get a couple bucks or even a lot of bucks.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: You want people that, like, actually believe so wholeheartedly that they're gonna do a lot more than just write you a check.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: They're going to unlock their community to the cause and to whatever.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: So I love that.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So thank you for that, thank you for being a champion of that, and I also just love this strategic, strategic partnership you have with development.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: That it's just not just looking through the lens of one event or one thing, but you are trying to go and build, you know, pipelines for people and I think that you're looking at it in such a strategic way.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: So I just think you're really awesome leadership guidance there.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: So can we talk a little bit about leadership?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I know this is a space that you serve Hugely in.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe just talk about what transformational leadership looks like and how you kind of coach folks to that.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: So I think you know, for me, transformational leadership has has shifted in my mind, and particularly in this last year.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: And so you know, when I first started doing leadership work, it was real textbook y'all.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: It was about theory, it was about frameworks.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: And then I realized, sort of like when you haven't eaten all day and you have like a snickers moment where you're hangry, really need to understand is how do I Respond, not react, and how do I get in the game when I'm a hangry Like that, when we are in moment, when we are stressed, when we have so many things going on, and so all of my theories are Presure tested in two ways.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: So two years ago, just about my ceiling in my office, as y'all looking at fellow in, so I was on site at a client's Meeting and my daughter calls me and says and she's blowing my phone up and she knows I'm in this meeting, it's on her calendar.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: So I was like I'm excuse me, I'm not sorry, I have to step out, friends, I'll be right back.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: And she's like mommy, you need to come home because the ceiling it's raining in your office.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I like a little.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I thought this is a metaphor your ceiling feeling fell in in the office if the pipe burst in the middle of winter and it rained in my office.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing that week I had decided to go through all of my old like backup drives, and all of my digital files.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: I was creating some new coursework, etc.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Y'all, and I left it on my desk that morning.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: I Want you to know that when all at that point of the 15 plus years of my professional career Was gone all of the paper, all of the digital files, all of my hardware immersed in water, it unda you just come undone in a way that you weren't even ready for, because there is no retrieving and capturing that.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: So if I was faking in front and and this particular job, I would have just just sold it up second night and women gone and got a job, because the reality is I would not be able to do what I do, and so for that moment I, the transformation in terms of leadership automatically Opened me up to beginners mind.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: I had to become a student of the game while I was teaching in the game, and so one of the things that is really important to me around my leadership philosophy now is that you have got to be present in the game.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Lots of us are amazing individual contributors, which is how people typically get promoted.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Right, you do a really good job.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You kill the game.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: You are so awesome.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: You bring all this money.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: You do transformational programming.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: Whichever lane in our, in our sector, you're in and you move up.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: We did some other stuff that goes on to in terms of, you know, structural racism.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: We're not gonna talk about that right now, so let's say that that's what we do.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: But what if you're just good at your craft but you're not actually good at teaching, guiding, coaching and being in alignment and community with others Around that same functional job?
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: What if you are a little bit of a douche?
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: We have worked with folks who we we're like I couldn't, I wouldn't throw you, I couldn't.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: You can finish a sentence you like me, me, me right, but if they produce, you've had managers who said well, I know he or she is a mess, but they produce.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: A Lot of times those folks get promoted.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: And so for me, being able to talk about transformation means being able to be self aware enough, be vulnerable enough, be present enough in where you are in this stage in your life so that you can lead from a place of a beginner's mind, of learning, of being able to be open, to Walk alongside your team and to be courageous enough to cast vision with such specificity that folks are like, well, you listen, I don't know what is happening on the other side of that door, but whatever John says, we are going, we gotta go.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: And so that, to me, has been sort of like my evolved Working practice of transformational leadership.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Not even so much of a definition.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I probably should work on a real definition.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: You know that, john.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: But practice and.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: I it's so spot-on and it's really interesting that you Correlate it to that pipe bursting, because that I mean it is like the ceiling collapse, but it's also I mean again back to your point, john it does seem like a metaphor where you had to figure out, like, where your resiliency was, to pick yourself back up and reinvent yourself.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And I love this Conversation around self-awareness.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: John knows that I have been a geek about self-awareness For decades and I mean I was gonna even write a blog about, like, where people could Come and get tips about how to be self-aware.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: But the thing that I've learned is I'm kind of what did you say?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: As I'm simmering in the crock pot now, a little bit older I.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I'm learning that you you cannot be someone who Subscribes to self-awareness if you're not willing to go in with humility and you're not willing to listen and you're not willing to humble yourself To hear feedback about what you're doing.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: That rubs someone the wrong way.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: I mean the person that you're talking about, that everyone that's listening right now is picturing someone they work with.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: That is a hot, hot mess and we don't want to work with those people and they should not be exempt From from their behavior because they're producing and I think, just being in a space where we work with missions, we work with really great causes, we got to push that aside and put the mission so much More forefront, because those kind of people are gonna make the environment so toxic, they're gonna drag us down and away from what we're trying to do and it's just not unifying.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: So I really appreciate that you said that and I want to get into this diversity, like within teams and development professionals.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: But I feel like you have a really interesting story and I and I want to go there today.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Of course I do John's like, of course you're gonna go there.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: You always go there, but I want to talk about just the lack of diversity in the development profession.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about your experiences because you have you left the development world and I and I hope that you know you feel safe enough to talk about why and what we can learn from that.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Absolutely so I think there are a couple things that happen.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: So one there.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: We all know there are different types of development you can pursue in our profession, and so the lane that I spent most of my career career in was in social venture.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: And so those are those fast growth organizations.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: They seem to spring up overnight.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: They have widespread impact as their goal and replication, and so on day one they have zero dollars and on day 100 they have 200,000.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: In a year one they have three million dollars, and then they're doing a twenty million dollar growth campaign, and when you raise money at that type of clip you don't really learn like the art of cultivation, of building relationships, because you are literally a hot rod on a track Going as fast as you can, and if you don't have that team and I I learned about all about NASCAR when I lived in Charlotte and I had a board member who was, who worked for NASCAR, and so we used to do a lot of big events, and so I used to watch with destination when the pit crews would get in there and could change out those tires in under a minute, and if you did not have a perfectly synced crew who understood how to make that happen, you as a driver, we're not going to be able to have a chance at winning that race.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Well, being an only in an organization is like having a badass driver, a fly and capable car and a pit crew Doesn't work.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Because it doesn't work because you actually don't have the support or the confidence in your pit crew to be able to pull in, get your maintenance and pull back out on the track.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: And so imagine if you're going at that clip all the time but you don't pull off.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: What ends up happening is you burn out.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: And so what I began to see over time were a couple of things.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: One I'm in a unique position because I entered into the C-suite pretty early in my career, about five years in and so I've been the chief development officer, chief advancement officer, chief external affairs officer for national organizations just about my whole career, and so when you are on the executive team pretty much a whole career you have a different purview Into the entire organization, which is why I'm obsessed with leadership now, and one of the things I saw was that when we had black and brown candidates Come into interview and I'm gonna be very specific, since y'all asked me to go there I'm a go go girl Into the interview process.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Solid was not a word that we could use.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: It had to be exceptional.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: There was a conversation or a question about somebody's resume, about their pedigree oh, they forgot an S.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Oh they left off a comma.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure they have the right kind of executive presence.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: What does that mean?
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Anyway, it was always.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: I liken it to online dating versus in-person dating.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: I'll give you go with me on this one, y'all.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: When you meet folks in person, socially or for potential love relationships, and you meet them at a social gathering, you're looking for a way to opt in.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: How do we connect?
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: What do we have in common?
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: How do we continue this conversation Online?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: I had learned this in my 30s y'all.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: This is terrible.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: You're looking for ways to opt out.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I don't like it.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: It's all too slim to this.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: To that Got moves bad bod.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: What do you mean?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Why you look like a serial killer?
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: You have all types of things that you're using to opt out.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: In these interview processes I would have.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Even though I am a black woman sitting on a leadership team.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: I found myself sliding into the same foolishness of the opt out Because we had not actually created conditions for black and brown professionals to persist and to excel in our organizations.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Simple things like how our payments and our salaries were set up specifically.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: If you start on October 1, and your pay cycles on the 15th and the last day of the month, and it's for the previous two weeks.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: If you're a new employee starting on October 1, you're not getting a paycheck until October 30th, so everybody is not set up to put their rent and everything else on a credit card.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: So inequities would persist in our practices and our policies and then they would just bubble up and show up in our hiring.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: A second thing that I saw a lot and participated in and was subject to is being a calibrating candidate.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: I'm the first to the party.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: When you meet Kashana, you either love me or you don't.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: That's how people feel about me.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: I love you Listen, I love you too, becky.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: You don't gather, but you either love me or you don't, and so I'm polarizing in that way.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I understand that.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I've been that way since I was a kid, and so I would go into these executive searches.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: People would be super excited to place me.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: I would be the first or second candidate in, and, almost without exception, search teams would do some version of God.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Kashana is amazing.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: I wonder if we can do better.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Calibrating candidates very rarely get hired, and so when you use candidates of color to calibrate your search set, that bar, that bar setter is never going to be as good as people who come into the search late.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: And so even if you're not using a search firm but you have a search committee or you're a hiring manager or they're cycling through your team, we are constantly calibrating For who we think is going to be a good fit, and fit is just a container for the prejudices that we hold around who we think belongs.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, say that again.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: So it's just a fit.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Cultural fit is just a container for the prejudices that we hold as we think about and we decide on who fits.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: We're taking a quick pause to get real with you, friends.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Let's face it, it's a new world.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Donor expectations are higher than ever and donors want to know what their personal impact will be, which means we need to start by building a truly resonant message.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And if you follow, we Are For Good.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You know we're advocates for nonprofits need to disrupt and adapt in order to grow, and our friends at Foster Avenue agree.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: You might know Foster Avenue by their former name, Snavely Associates.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing they're evolving alongside the sector too.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: As a philanthropic communications consulting and creative agency, they see how campaign communications are facing a revolution these days and, luckily for us, they're sharing their insights.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: The Foster Avenue team is sharing a 10 point checklist for creating campaign communications that meet the moment, and we want to get this checklist into your hands so you can start refining your messaging right away.
• 24:40
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• 24:44
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• 24:51
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• 24:58
  Speaker 1: That's fosteravcom slash good.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: My head just exploded, John.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And then that's a very real topic that's not talked about.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: You know, that's the box, that's any reason you can put in that box.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: That's not the right fit, right, not the right fit.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: And so what I've had to learn to do over the years is ask am I the first one to the party?
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: And if a recruiter would tell me yes, I would say call me back when the search is almost up, Because I know from experience that if I am the first round in, then I'm not getting that job.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: So I've had to teach other professionals of color to do the same.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: So in organizations, when I work with my clients and I go to different conferences and I do different workshops I'm going to do a workshop in December to get folks for the new year on just how to do this.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Well, when we think about how to hire our teams, folks give up their agency, particularly what my white counterparts.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: I don't know because I don't know where to go and what to do.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: If your friends on the weekend all look like you, the probability is you are going to have a harder time getting folks who look like me in the door full stop.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: So Sorry, Sorry, Sorry.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: So when people ask that question y'all about, you know well, how do we get more candidates to color?
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Well, how do you get more friends?
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Because it's all about not your first networking, so not that first concentric circle, but that second and that third.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: That's where our studies, the studies you keep reading about, like how to get the job, how to make sure that you are connected, et cetera it typically is not from your first round, your first set of connections.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: It's typically second or third out.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: That's donors, that's board members, that's candidates, that's any person you want to bring into relationship and into community.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: And so if we're serious about being a having professionals of color at different levels of leadership within an organization, we've got to be serious about how we build out that second and that third and then eventually that first circle of folks you're connected to.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: I love the visual that you just created there because it makes it I can see that and I tend to be just a visual person and I just love so much that you're unapologetically saying what needs to be said, because I have to tell you, in all the times that I have ever had to interview as a white woman, that has never crossed my mind about at what phase I need to go into and how I protect myself, and that makes me feel terrible, by the way, that people of color are having to make all of these slight adjustments.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: And I think and that's one and when you think about how many tiny adjustments have to be made anytime in your life, if you're someone of color, that can weigh you down, and so I can't even imagine like the heaviness of just carrying that around and not feeling like you have a chip on your shoulder.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: To rise above that would take an extraordinary level again of resiliency.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're giving me a face like you're going to tell me something.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Go.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: But the back thing about this from a generational perspective, right.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: So I'm a Gen Xer.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: So, depending on where in the Gen X flow you are, most of us came into our workforce under boomers.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: So that is play your position.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Play your position until we tell you that you could play something else.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Stay in line.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Stay in line, do your job right and, depending on how you came into the work, you do just that.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: It also doesn't give you space to turn and help others come in, because you don't want to mess up.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Because if you mess up, you mess it up for everybody.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: So then you don't give anybody a shot.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: We don't talk about that either, right?
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: And so when you are a person of color, and particularly if you are a black and brown professional and I want to go once or further who identifies every day as a person of color, because everybody does not then you are to your point, becky, carrying that additional weight.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: So my friends who are from the AAPI community will share with you that oftentimes because most of my South Asian and Southeast Asian friends are seen as model minorities that folks check the box when they've hired somebody who's from Asian descent.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: They're like whoop, good enough, diversity box filled.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: But depending on where you grew up in the world, you may have internalized white normative behavior, so culturally you actually are not showing up as who you are.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: See how that culture came back Again.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: And so what ends up happening is that you have folks who are, from a visual perspective, folks of color, potentially in positions of power, who don't advocate for other professionals, because that internal stuff is wild.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: And so if you would ask me this very same question before I left full-time work five years ago, I would not have had a good answer for you, because, let me tell you, becky John, my answer was practiced.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: It was so delicious, it was good.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I hadn't even spoken broken English.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: It was no relaxed colloquialism in my tone.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Only the good Queen's English hair right, because that's what I was taught would make me more acceptable.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: The first time I wore my natural hair to work, I was full of sweat by the time I got there.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Oh, because I mean, it's true, though, but this is a lived experience.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: So when you see younger professionals now, who you might experience as bucking the trends, you might experience as not figuring out how to learn their environment before they wanna get promoted, or they wanna do something different, or strike it on their own, et cetera, they have been watching our foolishness for a very long time.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: Jen Excer no, jen Ziers, millennials, this is an incredible space for you to tap into is what I'm sitting here thinking, and I know Julie's like the queen of young professionals, but it's like this is something that I want to unlearn about myself as a Jen Excer as well.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: It's like you think you have been bred, you have been positioned and poised to be a certain way in the office in the world, and I would like to unlearn some of those things and unwind it a little bit, and that's why I think, just again, going back to that emotional intelligence of listening, humbling yourself, learning, getting better, like looking at someone who's 24 and saying you have something I don't have and I need to figure out how to get that.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: So excellent point.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a transition.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much you wanna go into this, but the rooted collaborative that you created really, I feel like speaks so directly into this about trying to connect incredible talent with organizations that are looking for this type of talent.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Right, Can you talk about that process of that coming into being and just kind of how you work to do that?
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Totally so two things.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: I wanna make sure I come back to why I left, because you'd ask me that, becky, not even answer that but for the rooted collaborative.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: So a couple of years ago, in 2018, I was on the road a lot.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: I spent most of my time on the road as a speaker and trainer, and so people ask me where are you from?
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I'd be like the Delta Terminal the Delta Terminal.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Your top hanks in the terminal.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: You live there, yes, you can say those to me there.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: The food court people know me there.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I mean I got free stuff there.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I just I was there a lot.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Are you grieving because of the travel slow down?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Just sad question.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Isn't it hard?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: It is like and I'm an introvert but I like to travel, and so I still got a rush of getting on a plane every time, even though it was like a grueling schedule, but I loved it.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: So now I'm at home like well, you know I just I can hear the planes go by outside.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I just, I just Wonder what it's like up there.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Wonder what it's like.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: Pack my bag again.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Ruta Collaborative literally came to me on a plane.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: I always say that and you know, for folks who are listening, who are faith folks, you'll understand this.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: Folks who are not, and you believe in other things, something comes to you.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: It's overtaken you.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: But for me, jesus was like, hey, I need you to do this retreat for black fundraisers Good night.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: And I was like, hey, I'm not ready for that, I'm busy, bye.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: And then I went on to a keynote in Canada.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: I got hosted by some really amazing black field male fundraisers there, from the black Canadian fundraisers who were there and there's a whole group of them.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: They're amazing group.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: And I just started talking about this idea and they were like, oh my God, you have to do it.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: So the collaborative actually started from the me wanting to just do a retreat and I was like, well, where are we going to put all these people until this retreat comes?
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I was like, well, I guess we should give them programming.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Well, I guess I should.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: So that's how I started to do it and the idea really was born because I said I don't want other women who are coming into this sector to experience the level of loneliness and isolation and sometimes it is self-imposed and sometimes it's real and not have an opportunity to grow in a safe and a brave space.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: And then for women who were thinking about leaving or who left like I did, leaving with this feeling like why did I do that with my time?
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: And so how do we bring all those different types of women?
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: And because I was on the road globally, it wasn't I couldn't stop with black women, because when I would talk about it, initially that's what it was, and then women from other backgrounds would be like you know, I'm not here, me too.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: Put me in the number, can I be on the list?
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: And so I had to make a decision about how inclusive I would be.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: So we are very intentional in our language.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: So you often hear me say black and brown women.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: You'll often hear me say black, indigenous and people of color.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I typically don't say women of color too tough.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: I know that in different parts of the world, who identifies as a woman of color is different, and so we've made some intentional choices in our copy and in our language about what we are focused on, and what we learned in our first two years was that women were not healthy, and that is a mental and physical, emotional health.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: That was translating to how they felt about raising money, how they felt about running programs, how they felt about running their organizations, about being partnered with other women, and so I could have focused on professional development.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Right, how do you get ahead?
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: How do you raise money better, how do you do so, on and so forth.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: But what?
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: We were dying.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: And you're seeing all this stuff with maternal health and you're seeing all this stuff about all types of wellness that are happening out in the world with women broadly, and then with black and brown women specifically, and I thought, well, if we solve the body and we can focus on making your own paper, we get your personal right.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: Your personal is your professional, and so that's a huge differentiator between the collaborative and other groups that have sprung up since then, because we made a decision very early on to focus on the whole woman, because oftentimes, as women and any woman can identify this, any person who identifies as a woman can identify this or in person, really, when you are not allowed to show up as your whole self in a space, when you have to shrink to fit into a box, whether that's in your marriage, whether that's in your family, at your job.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: You don't show up as your real and your whole self anywhere, then you start to wilt and to shrink and to become a caricature of yourself, and so allowing women space to start to just be like.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: We want to miss the potato head action.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, we want to chee a pet action, just put it on it and let it just grow.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: And so what you are starting to see as you watch us grow is us be responsive not to what's happening outside of our community, but what our community is living and experiencing.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: And so we break new speakers, and so we teach women how to have a side hustle that makes sense.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: And so we teach women how to invest in their money, because there's a perception that women in general don't invest well and some reality, and also that when you work in the nonprofit sector you don't make any money.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: We can make some money.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: And if you get your mind right and you get your body right and you get your paper right and you get your relationships right, then by and large, the work that you do that's your mission in action will come alive, no matter what seat you sit in.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: And that's the bet that we're hedging with the collaborative.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: Now y'all got to stay tuned and see if it really works, because, child, it's evolving.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: But it is so much fun and it's so wonderful to see young professionals in particular and older professionals really step into roles, to rediscover and to discover themselves, and so that is the work that we do in our anchor is our retreat that we had in July uprooted, and next year we're doing it again, and now it's evergreen, so we're super excited about that.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Let me just tell you folks yeah, no, this is to you actually, kishana, that's going to be successful.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I am here to tell you that will be successful, because you don't know it.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: But you just describe Becky Indicott's life for like the last 15 years.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Leading up until this moment like I was a little wilted flower I mean, I've never heard it explained that way A shell of a human being, you know before.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I could like Phoenix out of being put in that box and, yeah, it feels so freeing to find your true self, to find your voice, find who you are and come out of that and it's and it's and it makes you feel powerful, you know, as a woman, and it makes you feel like you can take on anything.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: So I am thrilled that someone is taking this on in the sector.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I want to, I want you to speak directly to individuals that are in nonprofits right now, that are listening to you and they're nodding to themselves and they're saying I do subscribe to this kind of value system.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I do subscribe to this belief.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: What are some steps they can take today to recruit, recruit, diverse development professionals and make you know this old style of hiring and team camaraderie?
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: How can we make it a thing of the past?
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: What are some tips you would give them right now?
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: So the first thing is to really understand the working norms in your organization, and so your culture is an outgrowth of your policies, of your procedures and of your working practices and norms, and oftentimes we get real busy so we don't really get into the nitty gritty of how things work in our organizations.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: I need y'all to get what I say I was earlier y'all Newsy, not no Newsy and understand your employee handbook, Understand the unwritten curriculum that is happening in your organization and if you are a white professional, believe that you actually have way more social capital than I ever have.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: And so start small.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: Here's how I like to do it.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: The next time you're in a meeting and someone says something that you know you are, if I could be like the rock and raise one eyebrow oh God, I really wanted that.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: I wanted that too.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: I tried.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: It is what is so bad, right.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: If you have an eyebrow raising moment, this is your opportunity to make a step forward.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Say something, even if it's excuse me, that is unacceptable.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Excuse me my word.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Depending on where you are in the world, you know different levels of pleasantries.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: Excuse me, oh, my mom does it all the time.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: She'll be like, oh, excuse, because it stops somebody short.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: If someone is cutting off one of your colleagues who's a professional of color, say hi, hey, hi, my name is John.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Kashana was talking.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: Kashana, please go ahead and finish and sit back in your chair across your arm.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: We've all had there.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: You go Very powerful, get into the mix and start using your social capital in those small ways.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Because that's what, friends, a rock is heavy, but a jar full of pebbles is heavy too.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: And then, as you think about the practices, I have four really specific things.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Number one you got to know what you want before you go to market.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: So if an outcome is actually to have a professional of color on team, that is your outcome, which means you have to be relentless about your search Specific in the core competencies, the job responsibilities, what success looks like for a person in that role and what resources that you are willing to put on the table to ensure their success.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: That's before you put pen to paper and that's before you press send on your LinkedIn upload.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Then, when you actually go out to market, remember you are marketing for professionals to join you and we are visual creatures just like you, like cute Gerber babies.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: We go to your website and we look at your people and if it is as Lily, as a valley, you better have a darn good marketing paragraph that tells us why we should come on and join you.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: You have to cast your net wide.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: Think Olympic swimming pool wide, not New York City backyard kiddie pool wide.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: And as you go up in the job process, from screening to semi finals to work performance to finalists, every time you have a person of color drop out, you have to go back one level and do it again If the goal is actually to truly start to diversify your team and let's not conflate this nonsense, but we just want to have the best.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: I hate to break it to you, but focus color and particularly black women are the most agreed in the US.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: So the probability is I will out certify you, out degree you and spin you in circles and, if that is what you're afraid of say that.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: So let's not make something that's a barrier.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: That's not a barrier barrier.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: The third thing you've got to do is you have got to have parity with the way you do reference checks.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: There's an article that was written in what education magazine it was like at today, I think I'm a couple of years ago that talked about a woman who was a chief program officer who in her search found out after her search that she got asked for eight references and the person who was the second finalist got asked for four.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: She ultimately got the job.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: But if I ever have a recruiter ask me for three or four references and then come back and ask for more, I pull out the search immediately.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: Immediately.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: I'm not here for it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: I'm like I know you're not doing that for everybody, and so make sure that when you're checking for references, what you're checking for are ways that this person can develop, because by the time you get to reference check, that means their credentials are right.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: That means that this fit that we search for is right.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: That means that you know they can do the job.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Now you're trying to help them win, because if they win, you win.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: So changing that perspective on references is the third thing, and then the fourth thing is have an onboarding plan that you did not wake up the morning they were going to start to go shoot.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: I guess I should put something together.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: That's 99.9% of organizations for profit and nonprofit, I would say.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, when I teach folks how to do a proper onboarding, forget all these fancy tools and stuff.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: What does success looks like for them?
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: And, as a manager, part of the feather in your cap is when your people win.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: So if you do those four things with a clear lens on that outcome the one I said that if you're deciding to start with that, you start with that, the probability is higher that you will at least hire more diverse professionals to your organization.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: On the other side of that 90 days, you've got to continue to have things in place for those folks to continue to win, to grow, to feel fast and feel forward.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: And if you're not doing that on the lazy Susan, everybody gets an opportunity to get on the wheel then you are doing that person a disservice and you're not helping them to persist.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: So you know I could go on all day, y'all.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Let me stop right there, but that's just my main concept.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: She needs a pulpit, is what she needs.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: And she needs to invoice all of us for this time, because that is invaluable feedback and so helpful Because I think the hiring process is so difficult anyway I mean on being a hiring manager trying to find the right candidate but that is so helpful and I think it's so true of starting with the goal.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: You always got to start with the goal and keep that true North.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: So thank you for that huge amount of feedback.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, I know you love this sector.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Will you tell us a story that's really just touched you and stuck with you with philanthropy it could be happy, sad, somewhere in between something that moved you and is stuck with you over the years?
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: You know, for me, the thing that sticks with me over the years, believe it or not are the people that I've had the privilege of managing.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: So early on, and probably at the point where I should have got out and done something else, I realized that I wasn't as excited about raising money.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: But oh, I would get just ooh excited when my team would come back with their wins, and so one of the things that I am so proud of in this sector are the number of folks who I have been able to manage over the course of my career who are still in this sector.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: I think all but like four, maybe.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: And I've managed well over 60 people.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Across the six organizations I've been so fortunate to serve, and so 70 people, and so that's like a super high number.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: I was counting in my mind of folks who are still in development, development, communications, marketing related development work, and when they say that people leave their managers, they don't leave their jobs, even after I left the organization.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: To be able to have put things in place so that folks can persist and can grow in other roles and to continue to move up, to me is such a joy and a feather in my cap when I'm on a Hummelberg that I really, really, really love, and so for me that's something that's super huge.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: The second thing that I will say that is recent but is continuing to crop up is a continued attention on making sure that professionals of color have place and space to be able to flex their expertise, to be able to express their agency and to be able to find communities that they identify with so that they can stay in our profession, so that we can do away with this nonsense notion that our professionals in our sector are less experienced or less qualified or less smart or that this job is easy.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Hello, you ever heard that before?
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: Y'all I know you have.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that for me.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: That does it for me.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: But more than any gift and I've gotten a lot of really amazing transformative gifts, cool stuff from celebrities, that kind of stuff but nothing does it for me like knowing that there are people in this profession that, in part or in whole, because they worked with and for me, they were able to find their way and find their path in this career and stay.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Spoken like a true leadership expert.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: You know that who loves her people, you know yeah.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: I can tell you love people and you're such a vibrant personality and there is joy radiating out of you and it's really just a gift for you to come into our community and share that.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: You know, our final question that we ask everybody is what is your one good thing, A piece of advice, some counsel you might impart to our community?
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: What would be your one good thing, Kashana?
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, get you some good counsel, like we do not need an echo chamber of folks who agree with everything that we do and say we really need a crew of folks who will hold us accountable, who will hold our hair, who will hold us up, who will keep the door open, who will kick us in the butt.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: And if you can think about your personal and professional mashup of your personal and professional advisory board and you do not have that mix, get out there and get it today.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: It is so critical to our growth, it is critical to the health and vitality of our profession that we continue to have the diversified mix of mentors, of sponsors, of peers, of folks who look up to us, because that's what keeps us sharp and on our toes and really focused on accelerating and activating our missions.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's amazing advice.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: And it sharpens us at the end of it.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're somebody who just wants to be told what you wanna hear, how are you ever gonna grow?
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: How is the world ever gonna improve around us?
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: And again, humility.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: It all comes back to humility.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, being willing to hear it.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, Kashana, you've got a fan club.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: They're already pinging our phone lines.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: If we're live show, they're calling in.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: How do I get connected?
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Hello caller.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can we take calls.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we've got someone from Dearborn, michigan, on the call.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Let's schedule that and please do that.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: That would be so awesome, oh my God.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: So we'd love to connect people to you, though, so what is the best way to find you online?
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: What social medias do you like to hang out at, et cetera.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, so you can follow me on all social media, at funddiva, f-u-n-d, d-i-v-a I was very smart about that in 2009.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: Diva, so funddiva, and I would love for y'all to join the FAB crew, which is my mailing list, and you can do that by just going to bitly forward.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Slash kish crew K-I-S-H-C-R-E-W.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I'm going there right after this.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: It's on the show notes folks, so go, hit that up Go find it.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: And Kashana, you're my new best friend from New York City.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: You're straight talker, straight shooter.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: You're straight lover.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I feel love and I love this challenge you've put out to us and I love that you keep calling it nonsense.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Let's put the nonsense aside, people.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Let's evolve, let's be kind humans, let's be inclusive and let's kind of look around our world and see what do we need to do to improve it and make life just a little bit better for everybody else.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Thanks for inspiring us today.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: You're awesome.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me y'all are awesome.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: It's been a blast.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: We hope you're loving the Summer of Evolution series and to learn more you can head over to weareforgoodcom slash evolution for all the playlists, resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: We'd also love for you to join the conversation, share what you're learning on social media or join us at our free community at weareforgoodcommunitycom.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Can't wait for the next conversation.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: See you soon, friends.