Latest / Beyond Expertise / From Corporate Communications to Purpose Driven Work with Ivonne Furneaux

Transcript

From Corporate Communications to Purpose Driven Work with Ivonne Furneaux · Beyond Expertise

• 0:01
  Eric Dickmann: Welcome to Beyond Expertise, a podcast about identity reinvention for professionals ready to explore who they are beyond their titles and careers.
• 0:11
  Eric Dickmann: I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
• 0:14
  Eric Dickmann: Today, I'm excited to welcome Yvonne Furneaux to the podcast.
• 0:18
  Eric Dickmann: Yvonne spent more than 25 years in corporate leadership roles helping shape communications, employee experience, and workplace culture.
• 0:27
  Eric Dickmann: Along the way, she noticed a pattern that extended far beyond organizational charts and engagement surveys.
• 0:34
  Eric Dickmann: People experiencing work very differently depending on where they sat, who they knew, and whether they had access to information and influence.
• 0:43
  Eric Dickmann: Those experiences eventually led Yvonne to the broader realization that many professionals quietly feel disconnected, unseen, or out of alignment even while appearing successful on paper.
• 0:56
  Eric Dickmann: Today, we talk about identity, reinvention, and what happens when the systems we work inside stop fitting and the hidden gaps that shape far more of our professional lives than we often realize.
• 1:09
  Eric Dickmann: Let's get ready to go beyond expertise Yvonne, uh, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:14
  Eric Dickmann: I'm so glad to have, uh, you on the show today.
• 1:17
  Ivonne Furneaux: Thanks for having me.
• 1:19
  Eric Dickmann: As I normally do when I start these conversations, I really like to turn back the dial of time a bit and go all the way back to the beginning of your career, when you first started out, when you first entered that professional world.
• 1:34
  Eric Dickmann: Did you start out where you wanted to?
• 1:37
  Eric Dickmann: Tell me a little bit about your entrance into the professional world.
• 1:40
  Eric Dickmann: What was that like?
• 1:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: Sure.
• 1:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I grew up a military brat, so I grew up living in a lot of different places.
• 1:48
  Ivonne Furneaux: I decided pretty early on that I wanted to be a journalist, so in high school I was the editor of my school newspaper.
• 1:55
  Ivonne Furneaux: I went to school for journalism, and I thought my dream was to become, like, this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
• 2:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: I was going to travel the world and go into war zones and speak truth to power and do all of those things.
• 2:08
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and then after college, I ended up...
• 2:11
  Ivonne Furneaux: Or during college, I ended up getting an internship at the office of Governor Jesse Ventura in the great state of Minnesota.
• 2:18
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and so I started working in a PR office and seeing kind of the other side of things, you know, having been on the journalism side and then on the PR side.
• 2:27
  Ivonne Furneaux: Also, side note, in high school I was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News'cause I went to high school and grew up in Alaska So that was what I thought my path was going to be, you know?
• 2:37
  Ivonne Furneaux: And then after college, I realized, well, maybe I want a real job and not to be traveling all the time and getting paid pennies.
• 2:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so I decided I was gonna go into corporate communications, and I ended up at Target.
• 2:51
  Ivonne Furneaux: That was my first job out of college.
• 2:52
  Ivonne Furneaux: I graduated from the University of Minnesota.
• 2:55
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, but my first job at Target was what was called a business analyst.
• 2:59
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's the track to becoming a buyer.
• 3:01
  Ivonne Furneaux: So my job was, like, knowing how many pairs of Jockey underwear size seven we had in store number 375 in Greenville, North Carolina, and making sure that we were constantly restocked.
• 3:13
  Ivonne Furneaux: It was not the job for me, but I learned very quickly that when you get yourself into a large organization, you're able to kind of maneuver the ecosystem in a way that you can eventually land yourself in a good place.
• 3:27
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I landed myself on the communications team after a while, and I was there for five years, and that was kind of what started my journey in corporate communications and HR from there on out.
• 3:39
  Eric Dickmann: That's interesting that you had that vision when you were in school, made some fine-tuning to it, got into the corporate world.
• 3:47
  Eric Dickmann: When you got in there, did you like the political environment?
• 3:50
  Eric Dickmann: You said you saw a way to kind of navigate to where you wanted to be.
• 3:55
  Eric Dickmann: Did-- Was that a game?
• 3:56
  Eric Dickmann: Did you like that environment or not so much?
• 3:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's interesting because I had no context for working in a corporate environment.
• 4:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, my mom and stepdad were both military, um, both in the Air Force.
• 4:08
  Ivonne Furneaux: My biological father was a New York City taxi cab driver.
• 4:11
  Ivonne Furneaux: Nobody in my family had worked in a corporate environment, so I didn't really have any context for what it was like.
• 4:17
  Ivonne Furneaux: And I remember in those early years always feeling like I was dressing incorrectly.
• 4:21
  Ivonne Furneaux: I didn't know how to be in meetings.
• 4:24
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, you know, somehow it felt like all the people around me had gone to Ivy League schools, and I was a, a gopher who got my journalism degree, so I always felt a little out of place.
• 4:35
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, I think what I saw, though, was the vast opportunity that exists in an organization of size, you know?
• 4:43
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and I quickly learned how to meet the right people and apply for the right opportunities and raise my hand in the right ways.
• 4:53
  Ivonne Furneaux: And part of that did come from my military upbringing of having to constantly adapt to new environments and meeting new people.
• 5:00
  Ivonne Furneaux: So for me, it was like just figuring out what was the area of the company that I wanted to work in, meeting those people.
• 5:08
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, you can email anyb- anybody can email the CEO if you work in a big company, you know?
• 5:12
  Ivonne Furneaux: You can email anybody.
• 5:13
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it was just, you know,"Hey, I, I'm interested in, in learning more about this," or,"Could we meet and have some coffee?
• 5:20
  Ivonne Furneaux: And I would love to hear more about the work you're doing on your team." So I just started early on figuring out how to internally network in the context of a big organization.
• 5:30
  Eric Dickmann: How did you handle the change from being a bright-eyed journalism student who was going to, uncover the wrongs in this world to being in a corporate environment where you kind of have to toe the party line and, you know, speak in the voice of the company?
• 5:43
  Eric Dickmann: Was that hard to do, restrain yourself a bit?
• 5:46
  Ivonne Furneaux: It was a little bit difficult, if I'm being honest, in the beginning.
• 5:49
  Ivonne Furneaux: But I was able to think of myself as an advocate for employees.
• 5:55
  Ivonne Furneaux: So, you know, a good, a good journalist is thinking of themselves as an advocate for the public.
• 6:00
  Ivonne Furneaux: They wanna bring the truth to the public, right?
• 6:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: And I saw my role in communications, particularly in internal communications similarly, where I could be the voice of employees, and I could be an advocate for employees.
• 6:12
  Ivonne Furneaux: Because employees, especially in big organizations, they're often kind of the, the last stakeholders on the list of important people, right?
• 6:19
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's the customers or the shareholders.
• 6:22
  Ivonne Furneaux: Those all come first.
• 6:24
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's often the employees who are the last to know.
• 6:26
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I kinda made it my mission to make sure employees were the first to know, they were the first people to be considered, that when we were having some big changes in an organization, how is this going to affect employees?
• 6:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I started to see my role as doing advocacy on behalf of the employee population, and in that way, I was really able to channel that journalistic instinct into the corporate comms world.
• 6:49
  Eric Dickmann: So you started at Target and obviously progressed from there.
• 6:53
  Eric Dickmann: Tell me a little bit about that journey, about how you continued on in, in corporate communications
• 6:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: Yeah.
• 6:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: So my journey was a long and winding road that took some strange turns along the way, but, um, I went on to work in manufacturing and real estate and all kinds of different industries doing communications.
• 7:14
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and then I also started taking on HR-related work, employee engagement, um, employee experience, things like that.
• 7:22
  Ivonne Furneaux: I worked for companies from Redbox to OfficeMax to Anywhere Real Estate, which is the parent company of Coldwell Banker and Century 21.
• 7:32
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so my, my career just kind of crossed all these zigzags Over time, I also became really interested in doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
• 7:40
  Ivonne Furneaux: I was doing DEI before we called it DEI, before it was cool to do DEI, before it was not cool to d- do DEI.
• 7:46
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I also started taking on a lot of that work in different organizations, leading employee resource groups.
• 7:52
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, I did DEI as my sole role working for UnitedHealth Group.
• 7:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: I was a chief diversity officer when I was at Anywhere Real Estate.
• 8:01
  Ivonne Furneaux: I finally landed...
• 8:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: My last corporate role was at Weight Watchers, where I was a VP on the HR team, overseeing all of those things, comms, DEI, social impact, and employee experience.
• 8:12
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it was a great role, really culminating my entire career's work.
• 8:16
  Ivonne Furneaux: But part of the reason I jumped around so much, sometimes it was because I was forging my own path and wanting to find something new or bigger for myself.
• 8:25
  Ivonne Furneaux: I was also a single parent for many of those years, so I was always in a pursuit to kind of better my life, not just for myself, but for my son.
• 8:33
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, but along the way, I also encountered a lot of these massive corporate shifts that people fall victim to all the time, massive layoffs, a merger or acquisition, a corporate relocation.
• 8:46
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, three times in my career, I was asked to pick up and relocate because the headquarters was moving from one state to another.
• 8:53
  Ivonne Furneaux: I didn't do it twice, and I did do it once.
• 8:55
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so it was this constant, um, state of, of change and chaos that was happening in various organizations, and I was always at the center of it, being impacted by it in some way, either having to lead through it from a comms and HR perspective, or like being impacted from it by actually having to make a big decision in my life and in my career.
• 9:15
  Ivonne Furneaux: So that's how I ended up kind of working across all different industries and spaces.
• 9:20
  Ivonne Furneaux: But ultimately, it ended up being a blessing because it gave me a really wide range of experience that I can learn from now.
• 9:28
  Eric Dickmann: Did it feel like that at the time?
• 9:29
  Eric Dickmann: It sounds chaotic.
• 9:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: No.
• 9:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: It doesn't feel like that at the time at all, you know?
• 9:34
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, I, you know, I got laid off 18 years ago, I recall, and, you know, again, I was a, I was a single parent.
• 9:41
  Ivonne Furneaux: I couldn't afford to just be without a paycheck, you know?
• 9:44
  Ivonne Furneaux: I ended up taking a role that was a lateral move.
• 9:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: It was at a better company ultimately, but, you know, at the time, in those moments, it feels really, really difficult, you know?
• 9:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: And then I'm with the company for a year, and hey, guess what?
• 9:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: We're going to have this big merger happening, and I'm like,"Okay, here we go again." Um, from a professional perspective, I-- though, I learned to really, um, enjoy those moments of being able to lead through chaos and crisis.
• 10:12
  Ivonne Furneaux: I think it was where I had an opportunity to really shine, and again, it was my opportunity to really be an advocate for employees to think about how are we enacting this massive change, but still keeping, uh, humans at the center of it and really understanding the impact it's going to have on people.
• 10:30
  Eric Dickmann: When I hear your story about the chaos, moving around a lot, the layoffs, moving because of corporate headquarter changes it sounds frustrating, and I hear that from a lot of people, and we wonder why corporate loyalty isn't quite what it used to be, right?
• 10:46
  Eric Dickmann: It doesn't feel like employees are treated as assets maybe the way they once were.
• 10:52
  Eric Dickmann: Do you feel that way?
• 10:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: I, I do feel that way, and it's hard not to take these things personally.
• 10:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, when you're being impacted by them, it's hard not to feel like, oh, the corporations are evil or whatever.
• 11:06
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, but I also, over time, learned to be pretty pragmatic about it, and you ultimately understand, like, big companies, big organizations exist with the purpose of, of making profit.
• 11:19
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, if you want to work in an organization that doesn't exist for that purpose, then a corporation is not for you.
• 11:25
  Ivonne Furneaux: Then you should go work in nonprofit or work for yourself or do something creative in the arts or something.
• 11:30
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so we have to just be pragmatic about the reality that, you know, this is the construct of organizations that are built for profit, that are built with a hierarchy, that inherently have disparity and, and unfairness built into the system.
• 11:48
  Ivonne Furneaux: So we can choose to fight it, which we should often, especially when things are really unfair.
• 11:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: We, we also can learn to navigate it and just accept that the workplace isn't fair.
• 11:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: We're gonna get over it, and we're gonna figure out how to navigate our way through it and still be successful, and that means having loyalty to yourself, and I think that's okay.
• 12:07
  Eric Dickmann: Yeah, when I hear things like layoffs, workforce reductions, downsizing, all words for basically the same thing, you rarely hear about somebody who says Oh, but they handled it really well at my company.
• 12:21
  Eric Dickmann: Do you think it's possible to handle that really well, or it's such an emotionally charged event that almost nothing you could do would make it more palatable to the person who's being laid off?
• 12:32
  Ivonne Furneaux: I, I actually do think there's a way to handle it well, and again, it's by putting the human experience at the center.
• 12:39
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, you know, uh, 18 years ago when I got laid off, I was-- my entire office was literally called into a conference room.
• 12:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: We were standing around a table over a speakerphone, and a voice from somebody we'd never met in another country told us that when we left the room, we would have an email, and if we had an email, it meant it was our last day.
• 12:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: If we didn't have an email, then we could stay.
• 13:00
  Ivonne Furneaux: It was the most inhumane thing I could imagine.
• 13:03
  Ivonne Furneaux: I still, it, it...
• 13:05
  Ivonne Furneaux: I still have, like, PTSD just thinking about it.
• 13:07
  Ivonne Furneaux: I still will always have a negative perception of that company.
• 13:11
  Ivonne Furneaux: Years later, corporate relocation happens.
• 13:14
  Ivonne Furneaux: A bunch of people are going to be displaced at the company I was working for.
• 13:17
  Ivonne Furneaux: But we told people about a year in advance.
• 13:19
  Ivonne Furneaux: We offered really generous relocation packages.
• 13:22
  Ivonne Furneaux: We're talking like half a year's salary if you wanted to move, plus all the relocation costs.
• 13:27
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, we were moving from here in Chicago down to Mobile, Alabama.
• 13:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: I brought the mayor of Mobile, Alabama, here to talk to our employees.
• 13:35
  Ivonne Furneaux: I brought real estate agents from here.
• 13:36
  Ivonne Furneaux: We sent people down on exploratory trips to explore the new community and look at schools and look at where they would be living and the office that they would be working in.
• 13:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and the people who decided not to stay, we gave very generous severance to, beyond the usual one or two weeks per year, um, that a lot of companies offer.
• 13:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I do think that there are humane ways to handle these things when you set people up with a, a runway that takes into consideration the major shift that they are going to have to make in their life, whether it's moving or finding another job.
• 14:09
  Eric Dickmann: Yeah, that's encouraging to hear because you hear more bad stories than good stories.
• 14:14
  Eric Dickmann: But it's good to know that there are at least a few good stories out there, because like you said, it's a corporate world.
• 14:20
  Eric Dickmann: They have a strong profit motive, and sometimes layoffs or downsizings are part of that.
• 14:24
  Eric Dickmann: But eventually, in your story, you got to Weight Watchers and then decided not to zig or zag again in the corporate world and decided to do something else.
• 14:33
  Eric Dickmann: What was the impetus for you really saying,"Not gonna do another one of these corporate gigs"?
• 14:39
  Ivonne Furneaux: Yeah.
• 14:39
  Ivonne Furneaux: So, um, I blame Oprah Winfrey, and I thank Oprah Winfrey for the next chapter in my life.
• 14:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, at Weight Watchers, you know, Oprah was on the board for a long time, and after she left the board of directors and with the onset of GLP-1s, it was kind of a difficult time for the company.
• 14:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: And, um, the company made the decision to lay off about half of leadership, which was like VPs and up, which I was at the time.
• 15:05
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I had to stick around and run my own layoff at that point.
• 15:09
  Ivonne Furneaux: But by this point in my career, again, I had a very pragmatic view on it.
• 15:13
  Ivonne Furneaux: No hard feelings.
• 15:14
  Ivonne Furneaux: I get it.
• 15:15
  Ivonne Furneaux: I'm gonna do what I'm here to do.
• 15:17
  Ivonne Furneaux: I'm gonna make sure that employees are at the center, and we handle it the best way we can.
• 15:21
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so that was how I ended up leaving Weight Watchers.
• 15:25
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and I took some time to really think about what it was I wanted to do.
• 15:30
  Ivonne Furneaux: And throughout my career, I had been the voice of a lot of companies.
• 15:34
  Ivonne Furneaux: I had put words in a lot of CEOs' mouths for them to say on stages.
• 15:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: And then I had been on a lot of stages myself, you know, especially when during my years as a chief diversity officer doing the industry circuits and speaking at conferences and things.
• 15:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: And for a long time, I had thought that that was something that I wanted to, to do.
• 15:50
  Ivonne Furneaux: I wanted to make that venture into solopreneurship.
• 15:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: And my, my husband had done it for many years.
• 15:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: He owned, um, a landscaping company, and then he became a real estate agent.
• 16:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: And I always felt like,"Hey, I'm over here having to work, and you're getting to explore all these things." So I was like,"You know what?
• 16:08
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's finally my turn.
• 16:09
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's my turn to do this." Um, and luckily we were blessed at this point in our life that I could take some time to really figure out what it was I wanted to do.
• 16:18
  Ivonne Furneaux: I wasn't in that same, um, place I was 18 years ago, where I had to just take the next job because I have a family to support.
• 16:26
  Ivonne Furneaux: So thankfully, I have, you know, a different support system now that enabled me to think about, um, you know, taking this new journey on my own and being a voice for myself, that, rather than a voice for other companies.
• 16:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, it's been really empowering to do that because, like you said earlier, when you're in the context of an organization, you don't always have the freedom to, to speak as freely or to say the hard things, you know?
• 16:51
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, and there's something really empowering coming in as, as an outsider, as a consultant or a speaker, and being able to speak hard truths that I think are important to say.
• 17:01
  Ivonne Furneaux: So, um, I've really kind of embraced that aspect of my new journey now.
• 17:06
  Eric Dickmann: How great that you were able to have that period where you could reflect and think about what it is that you really wanted to do.
• 17:13
  Eric Dickmann: And what I find with so many guests that I speak with is that their next chapter in life usually is related to the previous one, but in a different way, more empowered, doing what they really wanted to do with the skills that they've developed over time.
• 17:28
  Eric Dickmann: And what I'm always curious about is you've made the decision now to go off on your own, to start your own business, to forge your own path, and you've had these six months of reflection.
• 17:39
  Eric Dickmann: So I'm sure you built a website, you got your domain, you
• 17:43
  Ivonne Furneaux: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Eric Dickmann: got a new email account, you're sitting in front of your computer.
• 17:48
  Eric Dickmann: How did you get those first clients?
• 17:51
  Ivonne Furneaux: Oh, well, you know, I thought that the clients were just gonna come raining down from the sky the minute I decided that I was gonna venture on my own, and strangely, it just did not happen that way.
• 18:01
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, um, but I got my first few clients really through leveraging my network that I had built over time.
• 18:09
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, you know, I, I'm not a cold caller necessarily, so, uh, and I had built up a lot of great connections and relationships over the years since I'd worked in so many different industries.
• 18:21
  Ivonne Furneaux: And, um, so yeah, I just really relied on the power of my network to get, get my momentum there in the beginning.
• 18:27
  Ivonne Furneaux: Uh, and it's, it's not an easy path, as you know.
• 18:29
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, it's a completely different- skill set.
• 18:32
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, it's, it's operating in a different way than I was used to from having been in the corporate world for so long.
• 18:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it feels like I'm still constantly learning and growing, and there are still days when I'm like,"You know what?
• 18:43
  Ivonne Furneaux: Screw this.
• 18:43
  Ivonne Furneaux: I'm just gonna go bake croissants at the local bakery and call it a day." And, um- Yeah but, you know, you just keep going and, uh, you know, there are constantly things you can be doing too to build your business and your brand, as you know.
• 18:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's like, do I spend my time doing a podcast or doing LinkedIn posts or doing videos, or now I'm working on a book and, you know, I have a speaker reel now.
• 19:04
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it, it almost feels like I went from working 40 hours a week to working 24/7, which I'm sure you hear all the time.
• 19:10
  Eric Dickmann: Absolutely.
• 19:12
  Eric Dickmann: And I'm curious too, because it's a fairly usual path, right?
• 19:16
  Eric Dickmann: That people get some of their early clients from their close network, and then that kind of fades over time, and you really have to develop clients, from scratch, if you will.
• 19:25
  Eric Dickmann: But, uh, as you engage with those people who you had worked with or worked for in the past, how did that feel?
• 19:32
  Eric Dickmann: Was the relationship dynamic different because now you're outside the corporate structure dealing with those people who were inside the corporate structure?
• 19:40
  Eric Dickmann: Did it feel different?
• 19:41
  Ivonne Furneaux: It, it did feel different.
• 19:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: For some, with some relationships it felt very easy and natural, and they were like, they knew my level of expertise and it was like,"Yes, let's bring you in for X, Y, and Z." For other people, they knew me in a different context 15 years ago than what I'm operating in today.
• 19:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, my s- my skill set was different 20 years ago than it is today.
• 20:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: They knew me as a communications coordinator just starting my career.
• 20:05
  Ivonne Furneaux: How can they possibly see me as a senior consultant that can come in and talk to CEOs?
• 20:10
  Ivonne Furneaux: So, um, it's almost like reintroducing myself to people I already know and having to, um, kind of sell my, my depth and breadth of knowledge that I've earned and gained in the years since we've worked together.
• 20:25
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so it is really different.
• 20:26
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's kind of like this reintroduction to some folks.
• 20:29
  Ivonne Furneaux: But it's been really fun too, like reconnecting with people I hadn't talked to in 15 or 20 years, just to...
• 20:35
  Ivonne Furneaux: Not to sell them on anything, just to, to reconnect and hear how people's lives have changed or what paths they took.
• 20:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, you know, some people may still be working at the same company that I worked with them 20 years ago at.
• 20:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it's been interesting that way too to connect with folks.
• 20:51
  Eric Dickmann: You mentioned earlier that you participated in some DEI initiatives, and that certainly was in favor or gone out of favor a little bit.
• 20:59
  Eric Dickmann: And now we're in this era of AI.
• 21:02
  Eric Dickmann: You may have seen the viral clip recently of a keynote speaker at a graduation getting booed because she was talking about the AI revolution.
• 21:10
  Eric Dickmann: And it seems like workplace stress is up, loneliness is up, isolation is up.
• 21:16
  Eric Dickmann: A lot of factors that are making it tough for people in the corporate workplace to really thrive.
• 21:22
  Eric Dickmann: As you deal with your clients and speak and, and consult, are you hearing this?
• 21:28
  Eric Dickmann: What are the challenges that you're seeing these companies facing?
• 21:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: Oh, yeah.
• 21:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: I mean, the advent of AI has just feels like it just blew up overnight, right?
• 21:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: And so, um, employees are feeling disconnected, employees are feeling lonely.
• 21:44
  Ivonne Furneaux: They're worried that they're going to lose their job to AI.
• 21:48
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, companies meanwhile, are like,"We're just gonna invest, invest, invest in AI," without really taking the time to think about the impact it's going to have.
• 21:56
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, I have my own concerns around, you know, the folks building the AI aren't necessarily unbiased themselves, so they're...
• 22:04
  Ivonne Furneaux: It's you're getting a biased result when you're asking it for information.
• 22:10
  Ivonne Furneaux: So then you layer that with what's been happening with the rollback of DEI initiatives, and a lot of folks are feeling confused about how do we move forward while still trying to support certain populations in our employee base, or to try to still drive fairness across the workplace.
• 22:28
  Ivonne Furneaux: So these are common themes I'm hearing everywhere I go.
• 22:32
  Ivonne Furneaux: Everyone I talk to, big organizations, small organizations, associations, corporations, you name it, they're all dealing with these things like, how do we, how do we maintain human connection right now?
• 22:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: How do we support employees fairly right now?
• 22:48
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, it seems like every keynote speaker now is a blank topic in the age of AI, right?
• 22:55
  Eric Dickmann: Right.
• 22:57
  Ivonne Furneaux: XYZ in the age of AI.
• 23:00
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it's like all anyone can talk about right now.
• 23:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, but it...
• 23:03
  Ivonne Furneaux: And it does seem...
• 23:04
  Ivonne Furneaux: I'm Gen X.
• 23:05
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, I, I won't ask your age, but it...
• 23:07
  Ivonne Furneaux: I just read recently that Gen Xers are like the best and biggest earliest adopters of AI right now, which I found really interesting.
• 23:15
  Ivonne Furneaux: And the resistance is coming more from like the Gen Z, who are seeing like they, they have a negative perception of it already because they're, they're seeing that it's impacting the job market.
• 23:25
  Ivonne Furneaux: And, um, so that's interesting too to see the generational differences that are at play in and out of the workplace in their response to how AI is being adopted.
• 23:34
  Ivonne Furneaux: But when I go in and talk to organizations specifically about the diversity, equity, and inclusion state of today, um, what I've been telling folks is to think about instead of thinking about our core identity, like race and gender and orientation, which are Unfortunately hot button topics right now.
• 23:55
  Ivonne Furneaux: I want them to think about people's identity in the workplace, and what I mean by that is what title they have, what location they're in, whether they're remote, whether they work hourly or salaried, if they're on the front lines or in a corporate office.
• 24:11
  Ivonne Furneaux: All of those things determine kind of our identity in the workplace, and they completely determine how we experience the workplace.
• 24:18
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, the corporate worker in finance is going to experience the same company very differently than the person who works on the front line making the widget.
• 24:26
  Ivonne Furneaux: So when we start to think about what are the disparities that exist between these boxes that we put people in at work, you start to uncover a lot of areas where there's, um, imbalance in your workplace that you can address because it's, it's systemic or it's something that your organization has created, and it has nothing to do with who people are, and it has everything to do with who they know or where they sit or what they do.
• 24:51
  Ivonne Furneaux: So y- if you can take that lens through which to view fairness in the workplace, it removes some of the hot button politics, but still gets you to a place where you're going to build a more fair and equitable workplace in the end.
• 25:06
  Eric Dickmann: That makes a lot of sense to me, and I think it's still a very valuable conversation to have.
• 25:11
  Eric Dickmann: When I started this podcast, the concept was really to dig into people's second chapters when they built a backlog of experience through their years working, and then they decide to take that experience and potentially do something else with it, very much like what we're talking about today.
• 25:30
  Eric Dickmann: But I'm also seeing that there are a lot of younger people that their second chapter is more like a pamphlet, uh, instead of a book, right?
• 25:38
  Eric Dickmann: Because they are thinking of exiting the corporate world much earlier.
• 25:42
  Eric Dickmann: They don't see that as a long-term home to build those years of experience, to do the zigging and zagging.
• 25:48
  Eric Dickmann: And they are just going out on their own and trying to figure out,"How can I do this without really building that bank of experience?" Do you see that a lot too, where people in the workplace are just wondering if the corporate world is for them at all?
• 26:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: Oh, yeah, and I, I felt that myself.
• 26:04
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, I was in it for so long, and now being out of it, I don't know that I could go back to it.
• 26:10
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, you, you see the, the toxicity and the politics of those environments.
• 26:16
  Ivonne Furneaux: I do believe that they can be better, um, but I also completely understand people just not wanting to participate in it at all.
• 26:24
  Ivonne Furneaux: Like, why would I go be part of that when I, again, I could go bake croissants at the local bakery and make people smile, um, every day?
• 26:30
  Ivonne Furneaux: So it's...
• 26:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: I'm see- I am seeing that a lot, and I completely understand and recognize it, and that should really be a wake-up call for corporate America to think about how do we create workplaces that are more fulfilling and welcoming and, um, centered on, on purpose and people versus just profit.
• 26:48
  Eric Dickmann: And so is that where you feel you've landed today, that you're much more in alignment with your own values, your own purpose?
• 26:55
  Eric Dickmann: Do you feel like the zigging and zagging is over?
• 26:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Ivonne Furneaux: I, well, I don't know if it's over.
• 27:00
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know, I think I'm much more in alignment with my purpose and my stage in life.
• 27:05
  Ivonne Furneaux: Y- I would love to be more aligned with my pocketbook in the way I was before in the corporate world, but that will come in time.
• 27:11
  Ivonne Furneaux: You know?
• 27:12
  Ivonne Furneaux: I, I think that's the struggle all entrepreneurs have in the beginning, right?
• 27:15
  Ivonne Furneaux: Is like, how do I, how do I do this in a sustainable way, um, that's going to fulfill my life?
• 27:22
  Ivonne Furneaux: But one of the things that I thought about embarking on this journey was really, like, what do I wanna get out of this?
• 27:28
  Ivonne Furneaux: Is it for financial gain?
• 27:30
  Ivonne Furneaux: Is it for freedom?
• 27:31
  Ivonne Furneaux: Is it for flexibility?
• 27:33
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, is it for the mission?
• 27:36
  Ivonne Furneaux: And for me, the, after being corporate for 25 years, the financial aspect of it just, I realized, was less important for me at this stage in my life.
• 27:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: And that's a, that's...
• 27:46
  Ivonne Furneaux: I understand that's a position of privilege to be able to, to, to do that and say that.
• 27:50
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, but for me, the idea of having the, the freedom and flexibility and being able to do what I focus on, what I really, really enjoy doing is, uh, where I am right now.
• 28:02
  Ivonne Furneaux: Now, if the right opportunity came along, if somebody called me after this podcast and said,"You know what?
• 28:07
  Ivonne Furneaux: We have this great role at X, Y, Z," I would certainly have that conversation, but it would have to be the right thing for me.
• 28:13
  Eric Dickmann: Mm.
• 28:13
  Eric Dickmann: And you mentioned earlier that you're toying with the idea of writing a book.
• 28:17
  Eric Dickmann: Have you started?
• 28:18
  Eric Dickmann: Is this going to be in line-- Oh, h- is it gonna be in line with your work, or is it something totally different?
• 28:23
  Ivonne Furneaux: No.
• 28:24
  Ivonne Furneaux: Although I, I, I've started on two books.
• 28:26
  Ivonne Furneaux: One is an erotic fiction novel.
• 28:28
  Ivonne Furneaux: We can talk about that on a different podcast.
• 28:30
  Ivonne Furneaux: One one is my nonfiction book that really talks more about my, my IP and my body of work.
• 28:38
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so, you know, I've got about 100 pages in, and I'm working with a, um, somebody to help me get that finished and published.
• 28:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: So I'm hoping that by fall I have that out.
• 28:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: And now that I've said it in a recorded format, I am going to bind myself to having it out by the fall, right?
• 28:52
  Eric Dickmann: That's right.
• 28:53
  Eric Dickmann: You've got some virtual accountability
• 28:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: have virtual accountability.
• 28:56
  Ivonne Furneaux: But my, my concept for the book is about what I go out and talk about, which is what I call the ghost gaps, and they're these invisible divides in every workplace, um, like the power gap, and the information gap, and the opportunity gap, and the visibility gap, and all of those things kinda shape how workplaces thrive or don't.
• 29:14
  Ivonne Furneaux: Um, so that's what my book is about, and you'll be reading it in the fall.
• 29:19
  Eric Dickmann: That's exciting.
• 29:20
  Eric Dickmann: Congratulations on starting that project.
• 29:22
  Eric Dickmann: I wish I could do that myself, but it's a real accomplishment to get one published and a great way to get a lot of things that are inside your head out onto paper.
• 29:31
  Eric Dickmann: And I'm curious, you've got such a great mission helping these companies.
• 29:34
  Eric Dickmann: If people wanna find out more about you, getting you, into one of their events to speak, uh, where can they find more about you?
• 29:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: Yeah.
• 29:42
  Ivonne Furneaux: So you can find me at yvonnefourneaux.com.
• 29:45
  Ivonne Furneaux: You can connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 29:47
  Ivonne Furneaux: If your organization is more interested in consulting, uh, my firm is called EmpowerUp Consulting, empowerupconsulting.com.
• 29:54
  Ivonne Furneaux: You can also find me on YouTube, uh, at Yvonne Fourneaux, and on Instagram at Yvonne in Real Life.
• 30:02
  Eric Dickmann: Ivan, this has been great.
• 30:03
  Eric Dickmann: I've really enjoyed the discussion, and I'll make sure that all of that is linked up in the show notes so that people can find you.
• 30:08
  Eric Dickmann: But I really appreciate your perspective here.
• 30:11
  Eric Dickmann: I think so many of us who have been in that corporate environment really understand where you're coming from and the value that you can add, so I, I've really appreciated hearing your perspective.
• 30:19
  Ivonne Furneaux: Thanks so much for having me, Eric.
• 30:21
  Eric Dickmann: Thanks for listening to Beyond Expertise.
• 30:24
  Eric Dickmann: You can find show notes, resources, and links mentioned during this episode at podcast.ericdickman.com.
• 30:32
  Eric Dickmann: If this conversation resonated with you, I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue exploring what it means to reinvent ourselves beyond our careers, titles, and expertise.