The CATK Interview: Nikki Lanier

0:00:01.4 Torin: We've been about this work, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. Shared through the voices of a White woman and a Black man. We bring lived experiences. We have pursued D&I progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and the King to cover news, tips from colleagues, and host incredible guests. Listeners count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for rocking with us. Check it. Julie, kick off the show.

[applause]

0:00:38.6 Julie: Welcome to Crazy and the King.

0:00:42.7 Torin: So let me just say we are almost at the end of 2022. Yet again, another year flying by and sometimes it's often hard to remember where we started. I tend to think about we get to the end of a year, end of December which happens to be my favorite month of the year. We set these manifestos, manifest... What do you call it? Resolutions, manifestos, resolutions, all of these things that we wanna do, and then you look up, blink twice and you're back at the same point. So my question is, do you feel like you achieved much of what you wanted to achieve in January of 2022?

0:01:32.5 Julie: So personally, I feel like I achieved a lot of what I wanted to achieve in 2022. I wanted to have a house here in Portugal by the midterms. I wanted to find a better work-life balance. I wanted to just level out a little bit on some of my intensities. From the business perspective, Crazy and the King has had its best year yet. Disability Solutions has had its best year yet. But the one thing I will say I did not do that I promised myself, and now I'm making this promise again publicly for 2023, is I did a very poor job of getting back on stage now that we're back in conference seasons. That's what I've got to do well in 2023.

0:02:23.3 Torin: That's interesting, because one of the things that I wanted to ask you is, who is your favorite speaker? And by the way before you answer that, think about that. What I will say I wanna be fair and answer. I didn't achieve the things that I wanted to achieve. I'll put them out there too. Number one, creative. I have long wanted to attack the D&I space from a more creative standpoint. Not a practical standpoint of consulting, not a practical standpoint of speaking or coaching all three in which I do, but I've wanted to create content. I wanted to be more creative. So that is still elusive to me.

0:03:06.4 Torin: The second thing that I've still yet to achieve is dropping a piece of technology in the D&I space. Let me tell you I'm 54. That's just the truth of the matter. And while I feel like I have the energy, I have the presence, the charisma, I still believe there needs to be an act two of Torin in this D&I space, and I want my act two to be a piece of technology. So one more year, I've still not achieved what I've wanted to achieve in the D&I space. A favorite speaker, do you have one?

0:03:45.5 Julie: Oh, yes. Right now, I would say my favorite is Eddie Glaude Jr. Do you know him?

0:03:50.8 Torin: Do I?

0:03:53.2 Julie: Okay. I was going to say, I'm going to school you if you don't, but he's fricking fire.

0:03:57.7 Torin: But do school me, though. Do school me. Because it's not for me, it's for the listeners. So tell me your schooling of Eddie Glaude, why do you like him?

0:04:09.6 Julie: Yeah. So he's the chair of the African American Studies Department at Princeton, has written dozens and dozens of articles, several books, including Democracy in Black, How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. Perfect conversation for our guest today. And he just, he says things in such a plain way and such a, no fucking around. It is black and white with Eddie, and he doesn't allow people to skirt and play these little political responses and games. He calls it how it is. And he just takes you to church in a way that is so intense because he's so smart. He just knows the history that impacts Black and Brown people in this country today and has for hundreds of years. And then he can tie it to the economics and the politics of it. It's beautiful.

0:05:08.8 Torin: So I absolutely agree with you. He is extremely smart. And one of the things that you said is straight talk. One of my favorite speakers happens to be Cornel West, who is also extremely smart. And Cornel West has a phrase parrhesia, that making things extremely plain so that you can understand them. And part of the reason why I enjoy listening to Cornel West prior to giving presentations, I like his cadence. I like his ability to captivate an audience for 60, 90 minutes, no slides. But what I learned in watching him over the years, J, is he didn't feel obligated to recreate new speeches every single time he stood in front of an audience. That repetition is necessary for people to receive and to really digest and take in the information.

0:06:04.2 Torin: We are in a place in an end of time where there is so much information around us that you do have to repeat things quite a few times for it to really set in with individuals. And when we think about the conversation that we're going to have this afternoon, I'm sorry, later in the show with our guest, Nikki, it bears repeating. So this is one of the episodes where I hope our listeners not only share it with their social tribes, but that you listen to it over and over and over again. So without any additional delay why don't we why don't we take a quick break and then let's get to our guest, Nikki Lanier.

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0:06:51.4 Julie: You to me, our guest this week in Nashville in September earlier this year, and we had actually already scheduled Nikki to be on the show. And I was walking around at Inspirehr.com where we were exhibiting and I'm like, oh, wait, I recognize that name Harper Slade. And I waited and semi-stocked. You don't know that.

0:07:13.8 Torin: Bad girl, bad girl.

0:07:14.2 Julie: But semi-stocked. Our guest until I got to sit down and have a fantastic conversation with her, Nikki Lanier, founder and CEO of Harper Slade. She is unyielding in her commitment to advance racial equity for some and equality for all. Nikki has 20 plus years experience in HR, employment law and time served as a C suite executive with arguably the world's most formidable central bank. Welcome to the show, Nikki.

0:07:45.5 Nikki Lanier: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be a part of this auspicious body. This is fantastic. I can't wait to dive into this conversation.

0:07:54.7 Torin: Oh, and we're going to do just that. When we talk about diving in and we talk about being auspicious, I want to go back to something that J said in the introduction. And I put it there purposefully because I don't know if people heard it, so I'm going to repeat it. Advance racial equity for some and equality for all. Equity for some, equality for all. Talk about that distinction because the for some piece definitely leaves some people out. And so I want that learning and that discerning mind to kinda hear you explain why you frame it, why you position it in that way.

0:08:42.4 Nikki Lanier: Well, it's an important positioning. And I thank you for asking me that question right at the outset. So let me answer it this way. This is how I define racial equity. It is proportional fairness that takes into consideration the cultural and historic realities that have beset people of color as distinct from all other people and works to remedy the same. So when I think about the urgency around amplifying equity, it is for the population of folks that have experienced the most inequity in this country and the same population of folks for whom the consequences of continued inequity are most dire, black and brown folks. So when I talk about equity for some, I'm specifically talking about black people and Hispanic people, thereby helping to pave the way for equality for all, meaning all marginalized people, all people who are navigating the life of other or different, whatever that is. And then ultimately, all mankind, as you know, Pollyanna is at my sound. So that's why... That's how I narrow my niche and that's how I focus my work.

0:09:56.6 Julie: So I love Pollyanna. We need to keep Pollyanna in our work because if not, we sort of drown sometimes.

0:10:04.2 Nikki Lanier: We'll be stir crazy. Yeah.

0:10:07.2 Julie: Yeah, exactly. So I wanna go back to something you said, but I first want to start with your background. When you told me about your career trajectory, I thought I can sit and geek out with this amazing woman all day. So tell us who Nikki is and your journey on your roadmap to now Harper Slade.

0:10:29.4 Nikki Lanier: Yeah. So I started out my career practicing labor and employment law in South Florida. I went to law school at the University of Miami after having finished at Hampton University with a degree in journalism. So I spent so much time practicing law and really understanding how employers try to find their way toward just complying with the behaviors that the law says you have to subscribe to in the workplace. But even that, for many, was a difficult undertaking. And then moving into HR, where I spent probably 18 years, I guess. And I've worked for a public sector and private, large companies and small, East Coast, West Coast. I've been the chief HR officer three different times. And, oh, my gosh, I just really began to understand and pay attention to how work works, when and where it restores, when and where it depletes, when there are continued breaches between what we expect from work and need from work to deposit into us and what, in fact, we receive when that breach continues in a continual way.

0:11:29.4 Nikki Lanier: What does that mean for the way that we can find ourselves toward engagement? And this is not about race, gender, any of that stuff. It's just in general, as human beings, we come to work needing to be fed. I mean, that's just a part of it, in addition to the widget making. And so that feeding, if you will, manifests very differently depending on the narrative that you come into the workplace with, the narrative that we're all assigned when we come into work. And so I started really studying that and becoming a student of that and my own experiences as a black woman navigating incredibly hostile, inhospitable environments that didn't know what to do with the way my potency showed up in my black skin, just navigating that just became its own burden. And so I was just paying attention to that.

0:12:12.3 Nikki Lanier: And in the last seven years I spent working for the Fed, not in a legal or HR capacity. I was doing macroeconomic policy, monetary theory, go figure. I don't know. People ask me how, I don't know. So anyway, I happened into that great role. Seven years I spent in that and really started to understand from a community and employment's perspective the cost of inequity. Like how much does it cost for our country to be both racist and sexist? And there's a dollar figure attached to that, trillions and trillions of dollars. So then that's really what informs my work, that body of academic and professional experiences. But what motivates me is the, as Dr. King would say, is a fierce urgency of now. There's a reality around the 2045 browning of the country that we've got to reconcile. We have to reconcile here right now because America is getting blacker and browner, it's not getting any whiter. And you can't sustain an economy with the majority of your population having had no real meaningful experience with how the economy works because they've been excluded from it. So that's how I think about this work. That's what informs the work. That's what motivates my work. And that's the tapestry that I bring to the lens with which I practice on.

0:13:31.5 Torin: You've used words proportional and fairness and beset and navigating inhospitable environments. You also used words, beautiful words like restores or restoration, repletes, which is taken away. And so the last one that I want to latch on and stay with is the reconcile, the reconciliation. And so how, Nikki, do we do a better job or let's not go with the solution yet or proposed solution. Let's go with how have we failed to reconcile. Give us a couple of examples of how perhaps corporate America, public policy, how have we failed to do some of that restoration and that reconciliation that's required.

0:14:21.2 Nikki Lanier: So America has always since its inception been a country that leans toward marginalization, muting and stunting of its browner citizen. It has never known what to do with black and brown people other than punish black and brown for being black and brown. Now what we have... What we've tried to do, our attempts at remediating that has manifested in the form of policy and law. So we promulgated things like Title VII and Voter Rights Act and equal opportunity laws. We've promulgated these laws. Really what they do is beat back the manifestations of what's in your heart. So said differently, if you truly believe that black and brown people are marginal, that they are subhuman and not endowed with the inalienable rights that many believe were given to all humans, at least via the Declaration of Independence, if you believe that somewhere in your psyche, either overtly or covertly, laws will tell you what you can and cannot do to manifest that belief. But we've never dealt with a belief. We've never asked people to unpack what you truly believe to be true about the value of black and brown people. We don't ask that at work. We don't ask that at home. We don't ask that in any sustained, consistent way.

0:15:50.0 Nikki Lanier: And because of that, we've never had to unearth it. We've never had to put it on the table and call it out and reckon with ourselves and with our psyche around that belief system. Our work at Harper Slade starts there. It is the harder work, the more daunting work, some might say, the work that will yield little benefit. But I don't buy into any of that. I believe that this work has to start with belief systems. So where we have failed, Torin, is believing that if we erect enough laws and policies and statements and banners and monikers and statements and slogans, that somehow that will neutralize what beats in the heart of most human beings. And that is the inherited understanding that black and brown are not equal to white. And that's what we have to deal with, I think, in work and in every other aspect of our lives.

0:16:48.1 Torin: That is not a milquetoast approach. You are very, very direct. You are clear, as one of my favorite speakers, Cornel West, says, that is parrhesia. That is straight talk. Parrhesia. That is straight talk right there. How do clients receive that? If that is where you are starting, you're starting with that mindset shift and that behavior modification system, and you are going right at it. How does that sit? I know it sits well because you're in business. You continue to be in business. But do you feel like the seats ruffle a little bit? Do you see some folks trying to get to the exit doors when you are speaking? I know that feeling. I've stood on stage and watched people run for the exit doors when they know Torin's about to go.

0:17:39.0 Nikki Lanier: Head for the hills.

0:17:39.9 Torin: That's right. That's right.

0:17:41.5 Nikki Lanier: Oh, I know. I know that's right.

0:17:41.6 Torin: How does it sit? How does it sit?

0:17:44.9 Nikki Lanier: So I'll say two things. Here's my caveat. I, unlike both of you, am fairly new to my entrepreneurial journey. So I'm 10 months in. I'm not even a year old yet.

0:17:53.8 Torin: All right.

0:17:54.8 Nikki Lanier: So thus far...

0:17:55.6 Torin: Congratulations to you.

0:17:56.8 Nikki Lanier: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

0:17:57.5 Torin: Yes, indeed.

0:17:58.8 Nikki Lanier: Thus far, the clients that we've cultivated, that we've courted, have some leaning into this work at fairly senior levels already. And they're pained by black and brown turnover. Right? So usually what happens is then you have these organizations, largely white leadership, who are just, we just can't hold on to black talent. We can't hold on to brown talent. We don't know what's going on. We give them mentors ie, we try to fix them. So what I try to help folks do is understand that our niche is helping you cultivate environments where black and brown talent can thrive. That first requires that our clients recognize that no matter what attempts you have even earnestly tried to this point, unless you have done the belief system unpacking, unless you've asked questions of your leaders and your managers and your supervisors about what they believe around black and brown people, how they grew up, what they read growing up, how well-traveled are they, have they ever had anything other than episodic engagements with black and brown people prior to coming to work, unless you were diving into those kinds of questions, your environment is just not gonna work for black and brown folk.

0:19:15.0 Nikki Lanier: It can't be the first time that you engage with me, Nikki. The first time you ever engage with a black person is in the workplace. And now you're managing me. And all you can bring to that is stereotype because that's all you got. You don't have any lived experience really with regular cadence with somebody like me. So our clients tend to already know that. That's one thing. We try to be very judicious in how we're vetting who's coming into the Harper Slade fold. But then the second thing is, and I'll be blunt about this, one of my biggest marketing strategies is my public speaking. I do a lot of talks, a lot of conferences and keynotes and stuff on this. And so when people hear me talk about this and then come up after and say, we'd like to work with you, they know how I get down. They know what to expect and what they need to ready themselves for. And I don't browbeat because I get where we are. I understand on some level, how it could happen that you could be in this place in life and be white male, heterosexual, able-bodied, and really have no other lens assigned right to no other lens than yours. I understand that. But I also understand the consequences of that. So we try to help them through that.

0:20:25.9 Torin: Julie, now you got to see personally and in real life why I ran to my table. No exaggeration. You had a chance to talk to Nikki for what sounds like a semi-extended period of time. I talked to Nikki for five, maybe 10 minutes, more five, and literally ran to my table and shot you a text message and was like, we get Nikki on this podcast because I know that she is going to jewel drop in a way that I can't do it. It's just not my space. It's not my sandbox. I just so appreciate that straight talk, straight to it, but the level of love that it is wrapped in and how you approach and do the work.

0:21:20.9 Nikki Lanier: Thank you. Thank you.

0:21:22.9 Julie: And as soon as she mentioned both employment law and economics, I was hooked. And I want to go back to that vein. So you said on Instagram relatively recently, everything about racial equity is counterintuitive, countercultural, foreign and uncomfortable. However, the advancement of Black and Brown people, especially economically, is fundamental to our collective survival. At some point, the cost of racism drowns the entirety of the country. And I want to talk about that from an economic perspective in a minute, but when you're talking to your clients, and so you're having sort of this, I'll call it a come to Jesus sort of unpacking of beliefs and starting what I assume is a fairly long journey to un-program the way that white people have been programmed our entire existences. How do you also lay out for them the real financial implications of the journey that they're starting for their company?

0:22:34.2 Nikki Lanier: Yeah. Well, many of the leaders, because we've been blessed so far to really engage with fairly senior leaders inside of the organization, they're friends of the Fed. Early Fed followers have some orientation with the work of the Federal Reserve. And so I unapologetically rely very heavily on the studies having been promulgated by the Fed, because I'm familiar with most of them.

0:22:55.1 Nikki Lanier: And it is usually captivating to most of the folks that I speak to when they understand that racism over the last 20 years has cost this country $16 trillion in lost GDP. Said in a different spin, we spend $16 trillion every 20 years to be racist. And then every five years, we spend $5 trillion. So it's a trillion dollars a year at this point moving forward. And that's when black and brown are not the majority in the available workforce. And so that tends to be a captivating number and it's arresting. So I get attention when I talk about that staggering of a dollar figure. But then I move into why our work focuses on the workplace as the incubator for resetting beliefs with the hope that what you're incubating and work will translate to the way that you parent and the way that you show up in your community, who you are engaging with over your dinner conversations, the way that you reset your understanding of black and brown people forever.

0:24:06.2 Nikki Lanier: And here's the argument, Julie. Since the Federal Reserve and quite frankly, even fiscal policy, so fiscal policy leaders, I.e. Congress, monetary policy leaders, I.e Federal Reserve, since we've been studying the health of the economy, usually the first place we look is the middle class to determine how well the middle class is doing. What consumption rates look like there, home ownership, higher education attainment, wage pressures, spending and saving on what? What does that look like that helps us really understand the behaviors, the needs, the trajectory for the entire economy really based on that middle class glance. And since we've been studying this, since the Fed and Congress have been looking at this, we've always relied on white people to sustain, to really buoy that middle class, which is fine because in that, what I mean by that is it's a population, that's a population of folks for whom artificial encumbrances into getting in middle class and moving up middle class are just not a reality. They're not as acute. So for the first time ever in just 23 years, by 2045, we will be relying on black and brown people to move swiftly into the middle class and to be saturated inside middle class because black and brown will also be the majority in the available workforce. Whoever's the majority in the available workforce historically, must also be the majority in middle class.

0:25:41.6 Nikki Lanier: And this inflationary period, middle class is between $60,000 to $120,000. And with that range, black people and brown people have never, ever, ever been meaningfully represented in middle class. And so it is an unsustainable model for the American economy. We can't sustain the middle class if we don't move black and brown folks into it with more swift focus. And this is... I'm sorry, one last point. So the reason why this is so important is because what studies have also shown, and this is both promulgated from the Fed and from major HR consulting firms, is that one of the bigger impediments into black and brown economic mobility up and through workplaces is racism.

0:26:32.7 Nikki Lanier: Not being prepared, it's not about not being prepared, it's not being that well-trained, it's not being a good fit, it's just the way that racism shows up and manifests as an inhibitor to promotional opportunities, to the performance evaluation process. Gosh, I couldn't get that out. And the assignments for exposure to senior leaders, all of which lead to promotional opportunities, even the entry level salaries. So we know that there's always inequity. There has always been inequity. Never have we had a time where there's not been inequity for black people in workplaces around wages. But certainly, the conditions of employment and the experiences of employment further exacerbate issues around black and brown economic mobility and work. So we got to fix it. Or the economy is going to be unstable. So three hours later, that's what I'm trying to say.

0:27:25.6 Julie: No, I'm trying to get in a question before Torin jumps in with the question. So I'm waiting for the pause. Okay, so you take that, which is something I did not know before right this minute when you taught me about the 2045 number and thinking about GDP and the middle class. And then we also have this other economic policy in this country, and I will not explain it as well as you are. But we also really work by the laws and policies that we have in place to make sure that it is much more difficult for young people to create wealth in this country. So in terms of, as an example, the pandemic with all of the bailouts in terms of big companies, what would have happened is older businesses would have gone out. Young entrepreneurs would have started new businesses. And that opportunity to generate wealth would have started there.

0:28:25.7 Julie: And then you have the other biggest piece of creating wealth within this country for the middle class is homeownership, which is now also out of reach for many younger people. How does that multiply our need to take action for this group of people, young black and brown people to also be able to overcome additional barriers that sometimes may not exist in the same way for older black and brown people? Or I could just be completely wrong.

0:29:00.2 Nikki Lanier: Yeah, I don't see much by way of a generational urgency as much as I do. I'm not suggesting your argument is flawed in any way, but from my perspective and my vantage point, I see the issue more rooted in how we see the value of black and brown humanity, the presumption of assigned value to black and brown bodies irrespective of age and gender is just far too elusive and too conditional. Black people especially tend to matter only in context with a footnote or asterisk and even then for a finite period of time. It's very conditional. And that has a cost irrespective of age. And so it plays out more acutely sometimes depending on generational nuances and some of the generational considerations. But the fundamental premise under which all of this rests is this understanding, this presumption of black and brown diminishment.

0:30:00.8 Torin: I wish, I swear, I wish I knew you about 12, 14 months ago when I curated a speaker series for one of my clients and the client was ICE Mortgage. And I would have absolutely had you in the lineup. I actually would have taken myself out of the lineup and left in the other two women and I would have added you because the richness is something that should not be ignored. And so I just want you to know, Nikki, I absolutely appreciate how you have framed this work. You mentioned on your website, people will be able to see it, that workplace turnover due to racial inequity has cost $172 billion over the past five years. You speak specifically about the required collaboration across the entire franchise to include a ribbon of public policy where I think we are missing, and this is just a statement and that I want to close on, Nikki, I'm sorry, Slade Harper. I just have to mention, I would love to see our politicians as bold as this right here. I don't need them to stand.

0:31:16.7 Nikki Lanier: Me too.

0:31:17.8 Torin: I don't need them to stand and curse people out or any of those things, but I do need them to be unafraid to say black and brown people or black people or brown people or those that are older, if you will. I need them to call a thing a thing and not be afraid to create policy legislation that speaks directly to that audience, that group. I appreciate what you've done. Tell us about Slade Harper. Love the name. I know the history. Those that are listening can go out to sladeharper.com. I'm sorry, harperslade.com.

0:31:53.3 Nikki Lanier: Harperslade, yeah.

0:31:54.1 Torin: Harperslade. I got it twisted around. They can go to harperslade.com, harperslade.com, but tell us about the beautiful work that is being done by you and your team.

0:32:01.9 Nikki Lanier: Yeah, so thank you for the opportunity. Harper Slade is named in honor of my grandmothers. It is there my paternal and maternal grandmothers' last names, respectively, and they gave birth to two amazing souls who were very steeped in the civil rights movement. My parents are the inspiration, as well as my grandmothers, for my work every single day. I see this as almost an assignment passed in utero for me to be meaningful and using my blackness for blackness, as my grandmother used to say. What's next for us? Since we've been at this for a couple of months now, one of the things that we're noticing, Torin, with our clients is that even with the best of intentions, our clients still struggle with how to practice these new skills and reset belief systems in the workplace because they got to go home, most of them back to segregation. Most of us still live in very homogeneous environments. We go back to trusted circles where everybody, our friends, our families, our loved ones, the people that we go out to dinner with and go on vacation with, they're usually the same political affiliation, same socioeconomic class, same race, same thought patterns.

0:33:09.7 Nikki Lanier: It's hard to disrupt those circles. That's where we are nested. That's where we feel our greatest sense of comfort. What we're looking at next year is moving to more of a focus where we're going to focus on retreats to help empower those that have influence in their homes and in their workplaces to become ambassadors for this work, to really stand flat-footed. I love that you talk about that with their backbones absolutely straight and understand, from a very personal standpoint, why we must be the generation. It is this dispensation in time, us drawing breath together on the planet right now who have to do in 23 years what we've not been able to do in 400, and that is assure that racism can no longer live here. That's what we're looking at doing next year in addition to all the other great work we're doing.

0:34:00.1 Torin: Yeah. When are you doing the first retreat?

0:34:03.0 Nikki Lanier: Oh, good Lord. I don't know. We just came up with this concept. It probably won't be anytime earlier than fourth quarter next year.

0:34:09.7 Torin: Fourth quarter next year. Okay. Got it. Well, I'm sure we'll talk a number of times before then, but I want to see if I can participate and not present, be present, but I want to see if I can participate in a way that gifts and/or allows an individual to be there who otherwise may not be able to afford to be there. All right. Because I absolutely believe in your work.

0:34:34.7 Nikki Lanier: Oh my gosh. Thank you. Oh, Torin, thank you so much. That's wonderful.

0:34:39.0 Julie: And absolutely, market it out to all of our Crazy and the King listeners and all that stuff. However we can support you is excellent. So harperslade.com. On Instagram, HarperSlade LLC. Where else should our listeners find and connect with you, Nikki?

0:35:00.6 Nikki Lanier: Yeah. So we're on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. If anyone wants to reach out by email, we're at admin@harperslade.com. And of course our website, www.harperslade.com.

0:35:07.6 Julie: Wonderful. Thank you, Nikki Lanier for joining us this year on Crazy and the King.

0:35:12.4 Nikki Lanier: Awesome.

0:35:15.7 Torin: Did she do some jewel dropping?

0:35:18.4 Julie: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

0:35:19.8 Torin: Did she drop some receipts as the young folk [0:35:20.1] ____? Yeah. Yeah. She put it out there. And you know, in the spirit of Nikki and the work that she is doing, we are absolutely going to amplify women in our Her Voice segment that are focused on financial inequity and social impact and social justice. And our first individual in Her Voice this week is Gita. I believe it's Gita. It could be Gita Gopinath. She is an Indian American economist serving as the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund or the IMF. It's the number two leadership position and she has been in such since January 21st of this year. Hats off to Gita.

0:36:07.9 Julie: And Tolu Lawrence, who is the managing director of programs and partnerships at Just Capital. She leads the program team in developing cross sector partnerships and engaging America's largest companies to advance job quality and equity in the workplace.

0:36:24.5 Torin: And then last but not least, Jennicet Gutiérrez. She is a community organizer for Familia. It's a Trans Queer Liberation Movement and they go by the acronym TQLM. Gutiérrez is a transgender rights activist, an undocumented community organizer. And you might remember her from her national detention that she received in 2015 when she interrupted America's favorite president, Barack Obama, during Pride Month. And she made that interruption because she said, look, I need to make sure that we get a release of LGBTQ immigrants in detention centers and we need to put it into deportations. So she's not afraid of some of the biggest stages. Really what we wanted is to drive home the point that we must all find a fight and do something.

0:37:18.8 Julie: Amazing. Amazing. About to close out 2022, thank you again to our guest, Nikki Lanier, who was just incredible. Go find some Eddie Glaude Jr. Go find some Cornel West. Take us home, Torin.

0:37:30.4 Torin: I close your mind and each and every one of you to find your voice, to share the pod with your digital tribe, to build better teams, be a better human, build better workplaces, better culture. Do what Judith Glaser says in Conversational Intelligence. Everything happens through conversation. For now, J and I are ghost.

0:37:52.4 Julie: See ya.