The Type A+ Podcast Season 3 Episode 10: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and How to Turn Belief into Action with Brandyn Campbell, DEI Expert
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Episode Description:
This week, DEI Expert, speaker, educator, consultant, and entrepreneur Brandyn Campbell joins Beth for a critical conversation about her decades-long journey in this industry, her personal experiences, and her tips for beginning, continuing, and sustaining your support of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in your homes, communities and workplaces.
For Type A people, anti-racism work can feel especially daunting. As perfectionists, we can be even more scared to make a ‘mistake.’ Inherently, Type A people tend to be a little leery of the learning process, especially when ‘success’ cannot be achieved on a scale. As a result, many of us hide behind the idea of perfectionism as a reason to be fearful of trying, learning, and truly turning our beliefs into action. We can’t, however, continue to let that fear or discomfort take over—especially if we wish for a more equitable world.
(Beth here): As a Type A perfectionist and maker of many mistakes, I am honored to invite Brandyn Campbell onto the podcast today! This conversation was born of my personal experience in learning anti-racist practices and unlearning many of the concepts that were taught to me thus far.
Brandyn’s Bio:
Brandyn Campbell is a speaker and consultant who helps leaders and organizations build their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through her DEI consulting firm, Brandyn Campbell Communications. She draws from over 20 years of experience working with clients worldwide to provide actionable solutions that center equity and inclusion throughout their systems and cultures. As a speaker and educator, Brandyn speaks passionately about the work of honoring our collective humanity. Organizations that have benefited from Brandyn’s dedication and expertise include the National Football League, Philadelphia Eagles, B. Corp, and Fortune 500 Companies like Dell.
Links mentioned in the episode:
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Beth Lawrence Meetings & Events Instagram
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Beth and other Type A+ Guests will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips on how to optimize your work and life.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Beth Lawrence: Welcome back to The Type A+ Podcast! We have Brandyn Campbell as a guest today, Brandyn and I participated in a mastermind together as entrepreneurs and business women.
And it just wound up being at such a pivotal time where not only did we help each other through business challenges, but also interpersonal challenges and just general living through the pandemic times challenges. So I got to know her not only for her wisdom and her deep, deep knowledge of her field, but also her as a person.
And I'm so thrilled to introduce you to her today. Brandyn, please introduce yourself and tell the audience who you are and what you do.
Brandyn Campbell: Thank you so much for having me here, Beth. I was trying to think how did we meet? So yeah, we really did go through it together. As you said, I am Brandyn Campbell.
I own Brandyn Campbell Communications, which is a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm. More than that, I view myself as an educator and a speaker who is deeply committed to racial justice and social justice and treating people well and treating everyone as humans and honoring their humanity.
So I work with people who that language speaks to, which is not all organizations and who are really committed to doing the hard lifelong work of, to paraphrase Austin Channing Brown, of “being a better human to other humans.”
Beth Lawrence: Well said. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and for everything that you do, and the fact that you've been doing this for over 20 years, and the period of time of these 20 years, how many things have happened where Your work has been such a necessity.
And maybe not has been centered in the way that it should have been. And then I imagine that you've likely been thrust into, um, being very busy at a time where it has been very challenging, um, for a multitude of reasons to be busy.
Brandyn Campbell: Yes, absolutely. It's, it's been a, it's been a journey.
It's been interesting seeing when I first started my career, I started in higher education and nonprofit organizations. So we were using this kind of language more than certainly the private sector, but not a whole lot and fast forwarded. We 2020, where this was everywhere.
And now it's such an interesting moment because there's been a backlash to that, and we're seeing DEI being politicized and even criminalized in certain parts of the country. And we see places where just talking about the truth of what's happened in our history so that we can do better is something that people want to keep quiet.
So, it's certainly interesting now more than ever is when, you know, I hope people will. Do some soul searching to see, you know, is this what we believe in? Because it's not about doing a statement because everyone else is doing it. if you've cast that aside four years later, then that can't be something you really believed in.
So that's disappointing, but I can't say entirely surprising.
Beth Lawrence: Well, there's a difference absolutely between belief in action, right? You can believe in something, but taking action on behalf of that belief is something. different altogether, especially if, if belief in our society, or if what belief in something looks like in our society right now, or in our culture right now is posting something on social media possibly, or like you said, putting out a statement or wearing a certain type of t shirt.
We're in pride month right now, I see rainbow flags everywhere starting June 1st. And wow, that's wonderful that it's centered for that month. And so many DEI professionals have posted on LinkedIn and who I know interpersonally saying, we are so busy right now.
We're so busy right now, but that is not what it's about. It's not about looking at the calendar year and saying, well, how can we fill up these workshops? It's about. How every single day can we make people able to come to work as their full selves and honor that experience and how that experience is different from every other person's experience within the organization.
And that's tough and that's ongoing and that's real work. That's real action. For a considerable period of time and as your organization changes and people that aren't willing to actually put the belief into action, I think that the result is what we're seeing right now.
Brandyn Campbell: Completely. And you said that so well, yourself.
And I really like using Pride Month as an example because you hear the word ally all of the time. But you can't, especially as the person outside of the particular group, you can't name yourself an ally. It is, folks who are within the group can say you're an ally, but it's just not something That you are, you have to show up every day through your actions to show your allyship.
What are you doing to support those who are in the LGBTQ plus community? Are you making yourself aware of the dangers that exist just for them to be who they are, knowing some of the challenges, some of the economic challenges, particularly for folks who are trans. Are you finding opportunities to hire trans individuals?
If you have employees who are trans or non binary, are you looking at the way your business operates? Are you looking at ways to be more inclusive, the ways that it has to be different? And it is, it's ongoing, and that can be Really overwhelming to folks and it's inherently different.
So, so much of this process is just unlearning everything you thought you learned and you know, I've been in project manager roles and you have your project plan. This is not a project plan type of thing. Like, okay, we did that. We are done. And that's why, and I can't make this exist in someone or an organization, but there has to be that care.
Exactly as you said, we want our employees to feel safe, to feel welcome to be their full selves. If that's at your core, you're constantly looking to see how that process can play out and knowing it's never going to be perfect, but striving to do better and learn more so that you can honor people that much better.
To me, it just sounds like a, what I would want to do, but it is not standard practice for so many places.
Beth Lawrence: I, you said so many things there and thank you so much for sharing that perspective. We talked about this when we talked about a type a podcast in particular, there seems to be a desire to have a scale or some sort of north star right that you have reached some sort of, oh I'm here I've done the work. I can like step off of it now. It's how we view everything in society we want there to be a grade we want there to be a level we want it to be a beginning and an end.
I think, speaking as a white woman, I remember there was a period where I was talking to someone and they mentioned what you said about being an ally.
It's not a title you can give yourself. You can't volunteer for an organization and say, well, I'm an ally. Honestly, I think we should get away from the label altogether. You shouldn't be looking to achieve anything except making other people be able to be whole in your presence and safe to be able to live their life.
Brandyn Campbell: Absolutely. I, it's true. And it is so different from almost anything else I can think of and it's hard and that's kind of the point. And, yeah, anything that is worth doing is going to be hard. Anyone who knows me knows, I just, I love quotes. There is so much wisdom in the world that is come before me and I pulled one up for this conversation.
It's an author named Cole Author Riley she runs the Black Liturgies Facebook account. And the quote is:
"Pity is not solidarity. Despair is not solidarity. Solidarity is a kind of presence that costs you something." when I saw that, I thought that's, that nails it hopefully that can help some people frame what we're talking about when we talk about allyship.
It's what are you doing? How are you giving up what you have to help make space and comfort and safety for someone else?
Beth Lawrence: Yes. What are you putting on the line, including your own comfort? And especially your
Brandyn Campbell: own comfort,
Beth Lawrence: especially your own comfort. And that is something that I was saying to you earlier, interpersonally, I see people, if they make a mistake and I say, you know, Hey, we don't say it that way anymore.
Or we use, how about this term? It's very much. It's very defensive and. I think that defense comes from, our response to try to get out of doing that work of, okay, get past the discomfort of the moment. Don't be angry with the situation.
Sit in it for a second. It's okay to be uncomfortable. How many other people are uncomfortable on a daily basis? We make so much room for especially white people's comfort. Bringing it back to this backlash for DEI, as a DEI professional, who has worked with many different organizations, including the Philadelphia Eagles and Dell, big, big companies.
Is this something that you saw coming this backlash? If so, how do you think we can make sure that the conversation does not die because of a bill or a mandate?
Brandyn Campbell: Such a great question. I think that I did see it.
Coming, if you look at just progress in American society and the ways that comes in, I really think my own real awakening and not just reading about history is during Barack Obama's presidency, and it was a phenomenal moment, but so many people wanted to declare, ah, Look at this. We're post racial. We are done with the Black people stuff.
Isn't that great? We, of course, knew that wasn't the case, but a phenomenal achievement nonetheless. And the birtherism, and you saw the underpinnings and the rumblings, under the surface, and sometimes it wasn't under the surface. And then who was immediately elected after Barack Obama? Donald Trump. And, It's now Biden in office and the cries have gotten even louder.
So in many ways, I think it was kind of predictable. Things are changing though, in a really substantive way. And I think, a lot of the noise that we're hearing and it's gotten very loud right now is people who know that their time is up. They know it and it's kind of like the last dying cries of a dying animal.
But that said, there's going to be a lot of noise for a while. And I like to visualize it that way. It just makes me feel better. I, I think I know that we're going to continue to see progress. I think the fact that. So many organizations still are having these conversations. I just finished doing work with a predominantly white church congregation.
Like that's kind of shocking. I'm still shocked that that actually happened. Progress is going to happen, whether or not people want it to, I have so much faith in Gen Z, I hate that so much is being put on their shoulders. But when you look at just research about Gen Z, I spent a decent amount of time in schools doing trainings with student leaders.
They are just not about this bullshit. They're like, why? This is stupid. This is really simple. One of my favorite moments is sometimes we'll just be defining terms and we'll say gender identity and sexuality are these the same thing and they'll just look at me like of course it's not and I just the fact that they're having these conversations at 13 and 14 and 15 they're not going to put up with this and so increasingly they're also the most diverse Generation and history in American history.
It's just going to keep going and going, and attitudes will continue to shift. Some people want to call it. Woke ism or whatever else, but that train is barreling down and change is going to continue to happen.
And the other part of your question, what can people do is really to. Know who they are and what they believe and back to that quote and this idea of allyship.
What can they put on the line to make this happen in their own community and their own workplaces? If your workplace was 1, that was like, oh, let's do training now. Not so much. Okay. What questions can you raise to keep the fire burning? If there is, I just had a conversation with a friend. Who was really excited that her workplace is, as they should, hiring the very capable black man over the capable white woman, but who was more lackluster, you know, how can you have conversations to impact hiring decisions, or the recruiting process, or to encourage your employer to look beyond the normal applicant pool?
There is something we all can do at any given moment. And it's really thinking about. What you believe and exerting that into your everyday life.
Beth Lawrence: Exerting it into your everyday life, taking action, very, very important to take action in your communities and start it, in your small, small, quote, unquote, world.
I'm a huge believer that it can make an impact more widespread, especially within your organization and not only within your ERG group meetings, which I know are critical. I'm not putting ERG group meetings down, but, you know, again, that can seem like a box that's checked sometimes if it's not managed properly.
I have not been in corporate America. I will preface it by saying that in a long time, but from what I hear from HR folks, um, It seems sometimes like it can be wonderful, but, intention and result are two different things.
Brandyn Campbell: Yes, intention over impact. And one thing I wanted to say when you were giving the example of.
White women in particular, but this is everyone making mistakes and getting defensive about it. It's part of why I have communications and the title of the work that I do, because so much of this work is the ways that we communicate with 1 another or don't communicate and listening is a critical skill in this, and truly listening, which very few of us ever do.
Fully listening to someone, if they're saying, "Hey, this didn't quite hit the mark." And not just like double dutch, waiting for your chance to jump in. Fully receiving it, hearing it, pausing before you respond. Maybe give yourself five seconds. "Okay, what I heard you tell me..." and being truly humble. Working with people is messy, and this is about how we treat others.
I think it's a, an amazing opportunity. If someone says, you know, what would really be helpful to me, what I would love if you could do, if you could do this. Okay. I don't know why I wouldn't do that. And sure, maybe it stings. I'm sure we all replay conversations and think, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did this, but ultimately you just have the opportunity.
Someone told you. How to treat you how to treat them better. That's not a mistake. That's growth. That's a learning opportunity. You were gifted. So if we can even shift how we view, quote, unquote, making mistakes, that can be such a powerful. Paradigm shift in this work
Beth Lawrence: Especially as we talk about you talked about giving working with Children and even younger generations.
I know you're a parent, like the way that we talk to and incorporate this work into our everyday life is going to have an impact on the future. Whether it's our future, I don't have children, but there's children in my life, you know, and I'm a part of a community where there's children. So if I can behave a certain way, if I can correct behavior, if I can learn from my own mistakes and also other people's mistakes.
It's uncomfortable in the moment, but so much of growth is uncomfortable, as you've talked about.
Brandyn Campbell: Completely. I cannot think of a single instance in my personal life where I've gotten a lesson I really needed, where I was like, oh, that was easy! Because if it was easy, it wouldn't be notable, and I wouldn't have learned the lesson.
I would keep skating and Being on the surface, being like, Oh, well, I don't really have to deal with this. It's when you have those moments where you hit a brick wall, oh, crap. And I often have the conversation with the universe, like, could we have, I get the point. Could we have made that a little bit easier?
I'm sure the response is no, because you wouldn't have gotten the message then. And that's really the same. And as you were saying about being in this work and modeling it, even modeling it for younger people in our lives is so important, we're having this conversation via zoom, we both have our pronouns on the screen.
I remember during the COVID lockdown, I had my pronouns, Matthew was six. He asked, why do you have she, her next to your name? That was an opportunity. And I explained it. In an age appropriate way, I think I explained it well, and he just said, okay, wasn't a big deal, and it's normalized. He sees it all the time now.
I've heard him ask about people's pronouns. Young kids are looking, and if you kind of model, hey, this isn't a big deal, this is just a way people can be. They, they get it. It's amazing how much kids get it, until we tell them, it shouldn't be that way.
Beth Lawrence: That's so true. And I'm so glad that you were able to have that moment with him at that age.
It's, it's amazing to see how quick children absorb things. So I also shared with you that I am an emotional, type, a person . I've always been an emotional person. And so tears for me are natural, whatever big emotion I'm feeling.
However, and however, I have learned. That especially in situations where there is a moment where I am being taught something or I am being corrected when it comes to anti racism or when it comes to using someone's incorrect pronouns or name, um, where the instinct, whether the tears come out or not, I can feel the instinct in my body is to cry.
And I learned that it has been weaponized throughout history. Can you explain for folks like me a little bit of context as far as why that is so harmful and what to do instead?
Brandyn Campbell: Absolutely. So I absolutely empathize. Obviously I'm a black woman, but I also am emotional. I can cry at the drop of a hat. So I, I hear you on that front. It's something, an instinct to cry if a mistake is made. is weaponized because throughout history, there are so many tragic examples. This is an extreme example, but one I'll give nonetheless.
If we think of the lynching of Emmett Till, it was because a white woman said, oh, this black boy whistled at me. So maybe she was crying, maybe she wasn't. Just that role of the white damsel in distress who needs to be protected then flipped and caused the horrific murder of this little boy. So the tears shift the harm that was done to a person of color, individual of a marginalized identity, and it's taking from them the harm, and it's shifting, it's centering whiteness.
It's centering the person, we'll use white woman in this example, centering their feelings. Instead of the harm that was caused to the other person. So then that further causes harm. Imagine if someone has slighted you in some way, intentionally or not, it is the impact that matters over the intention.
And you're trying to point out, "Hey, this hurt me." And then they say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. You're calling me a racist. Oh, I'm so, so upset; even over apologizing does something similar. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And it's our instinct, and we really have to work to not do that. Because, again, you're making someone who was hurt.
You're ignoring their pain and shifting the focus onto onto you. So de centering ourselves is a huge part of this and it's hard to do. We are people who center ourselves in all aspects of life. That's very much Western society. It's all about the individual. in this work, though, if you are that caring person, even if your intentions are good, having tears over apologizing, you are.
Really robbing that person of being who they are. of what they're trying to explain to you, and you've now shifted, once again, the attention on you to focusing on whiteness once again. So that's really the harm that's caused. So think about, think in advance about what you might do in such a moment.
Is it just kind of, swallow your pride, and then after the person leaves, or after you have a moment, you can go run to a bathroom and cry, I'm not telling you to not. Let that go. I'm acknowledging that that does not feel good, but the way you feel is not the central point in an interaction. If someone's trying to, and I like the language of, of call you in, I'll give An example, I recently was in a group and someone talked about, I think I gave an example of being at a store and a woman, a white woman was going in to touch my hair.
And, uh, I, I can't believe that we haven't all gotten the memo, but that is just not what we should be doing in 2024. But here we are, stopped her. And the person in my group was like, "well, I don't understand why you'd be offended. She was, she just liked your hair and was trying to give you a compliment." So you're then telling me I'm wrong
about how I felt in the moment, I'm wrong in the interpretation of how this is a microaggression. And now I'm supposed to, "oh, oh, you're right. Oh, she's just trying to say she likes your hair. What's wrong with you? That is not a way to do it. So that is an example of what not to do.
Beth Lawrence: I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Both the encounter and also the reaction within your friend group as well.
Brandyn Campbell: Thank you.
Beth Lawrence: Yeah, especially in 2024.
Brandyn Campbell: I'm continually shocked. I have to say of the number of items where folks have not gotten the memo.
Beth Lawrence: Something you said also touched me as well, you also don't have to be polite.
You don't have to call someone in. You can call people out. And the reaction of the person being called out should still be the same.
Brandyn Campbell: Yes.
Beth Lawrence: Regardless of the level of discomfort of the conversation.
Brandyn Campbell: Thank you for saying that because that is absolutely, that's absolutely right. Someone's, if someone isn't telling, is telling you in any way about your actions, no one has that obligation.
So whether they do it politely or not, you still need to look at it as a gift.
Beth Lawrence: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing and I'm so sorry that this work and just your interpersonal day to day interactions are bringing into focus, why this work is so needed on such a large scale.
Brandyn Campbell: Yeah, absolutely.
Beth Lawrence: Quickly for the parents in my life who are listening, how can parents help make sure that, whether there's education or not, how do you continue this work of diversity, equity, inclusion, and bringing this conversation to light within your home every day?
Brandyn Campbell: Love that question. There are so many ways, but the primary way is to normalize having conversations about race, about difference.
Most of us have been taught It's like company. We're not supposed to talk about these things. Let's change that. Let's flip it on its head. If your child has an interaction where they comment on someone's skin color, if we shut it down and act embarrassed, we're modeling then that talking about race is inherently embarrassing.
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There was me and another Black woman on the block, Ms. Diane. He saw me and said, Hi, Ms. Diane! And the mother was petrified. There is an opportunity to say " Oh, that's not Ms. Diane. She does have, you probably noticed, she has the same beautiful chocolate skin. You know, hi, Ms. Brandyn." We can, of course, the kid is going to notice that I'm a different skin color.
That's fine. So let's try to get out of some of our own discomfort and encourage our kids to keep going if they notice a difference or comment in terms of bringing this work into their education, or just being having it be a part of their lives. Look at the books that they're reading. There are so many amazing kids books now with amazing illustrations that celebrate diversity.
Are those some of the books they're bringing home from the school library? If not, could you be a secret reader and pick a book like that and highlight it and read it to your kids class if it's a younger child? This, Threats. It's probably going to be around for a while with school boards, wanting to ban books.
If that's been happening in your community, can you speak up in some way? Can you send a letter to the school board? You don't have to be a parent for this to matter. If you're a community member, you can still weigh in. I think those are some really, maybe not easy, but actionable ways people can find opportunities within their own lives.
But yeah, if there is something, I think the biggest thing is there's something that happens and it's about race, even if it feels awkward to you, don't pass that to your kids. Have the conversation. Get past the discomfort.
Beth Lawrence: Thank you so much. I love the advice that you don't have to have children to get involved in something like books being banned in your community.
Because I always think of the school board as not that it's inconsequential to me, but it doesn't have a direct effect on my day to day life. I think, right, but it does in my community. And we're actually recording this on New Jersey's primary day. So Brandyn, first of all, I want to thank you so much for coming on this podcast and having this conversation with me and sharing your years of expertise, but also your experience with me.
Brandyn Campbell: Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. Beth.
Beth Lawrence: And I want to make sure that people can get in touch with you because you're incredible and you do amazing work. And, would love them to be able to hire you as well. So how can they get in touch with you?
Brandyn Campbell: Yeah, the best way is to go to my website.
There are a couple of ways to connect there. And my website is Brandyncampbell. com. I will spell it. Brandyn is with a Y instead of an O. B R A N D Y N, Campbell, C A M P B E L L, dot com. I have some information about the ways you can work with me, and I'll additionally mention I have recently launched what's called anti racism.
Racist leadership coaching for folks like in the example when we were talking about how to be an ally the folks who are at an organization that maybe isn't about this work, but you are and let's say you're in a manager. So, what are ways that I can assert my beliefs in treating people? Well, into my work, I realized I was having those conversations with clients off the cuff anyway.
And there is. A hunger for this by people I've worked with, who still have that passion, but they see their organization isn't quite matching them. so, for those folks, I love those folks and want to give them an opportunity to work through some of this on an ongoing basis. And I'm on LinkedIn, but all of that you can get to via my website.
Beth Lawrence: Oh, thank you. I'm so hopeful that everyone will get in touch with you. And that leadership coaching offering sounds like it's the perfect timing.
Brandyn Campbell: Thank you. Yeah. I'm really excited about it, and have gotten some good, early feedback. So I'm excited to see the people I'm going to have a chance to work with.
Beth Lawrence: Well, hopefully the listeners will be some of them. Thank you so much again, Brandyn, and thank you all so much for listening. We will be back next time with a new episode of the type a plus podcast. Take care.