Episode 33: Inclusive leadership: The Power of Stories with Kim A. Thompson

Former PwC Principal and CEO Action For Racial Equity Fellow Alum Kim A. Thompson describes how companies can design inclusion practices that work by focusing first on people’s individual stories.

Chris Riback: Kim, thanks so much for joining us. We're really looking forward to this conversation.

Kim A. Thompson: Yes, me too. Thanks for having me.

Chris Riback: I think for context, your background. Could you share with us how did you get into the inclusion field, what brought you there, and what are the types of things that you've done?

Kim A. Thompson: I mean, I started my career really at a big international law firm doing commercial litigation, securities litigation, as well as a little bit of pro bono work, but went into PricewaterhouseCoopers, worked my way up to the partnership, and had various sort of regular corporate America-type jobs, including as deputy, general counsel, and other global leadership roles, but at the same time took on some diversity, inclusion-related roles and responsibilities, including as the National Black Inclusion leader. With that, I participated in a host of different activities designed to create an inclusive environment to really also create opportunities for our Black professionals to develop leadership skills and really do everything that we could to help our Black professionals thrive.

By the way, my firm, PwC, now retired firm PwC, we had similar inclusion networks for various others in the firm, Latinos and Latinas, people of Asian descent, veterans, members of LGBTQIA community, parents, caregivers, et cetera. For me, doing some of that work was really critical. Because when I was coming up in the firm, I saw no role models that looked like me. When I became a partner, there were very, very few, most of whom, all two of us, becoming partners at the same time. Really, there weren't a lot of other people who looked like me at the firm, but I wanted to make sure that that hole was filled. Still, it was more of sort of a nights and weekends role, and it wasn't my day job. I really had a nights and weekends job because I did a lot of community stuff already. I was on a bunch of nonprofit boards, still am. Did a lot of community-related work.

But in 2020, when the world awakened to the realities of racial inequities that are facing the country, my CEO announced the start of a racial equity fellowship where folks from our firm worked with people from various other companies on racial equity, public policies, and corporate strategies trying to address systemic racism. I was in that fellowship for about three years.

Diane Flynn: Kim, you have such an impressive history. Every time we work with a leader, the first question they ask is, "How do we measure these initiatives? They're costly in time, in resources, people, power." What would you say to that? What did you see in terms of KPIs as a result of all the initiatives that you put in place?

Kim A. Thompson: Well, certainly from the racial equity fellowship perspective, it is ongoing. Change takes a long time, and one of the things that we were focused on related to policy work. Simply because if you change policy, if you change the law, it usually lasts and sticks a little longer.

That said, a number of companies learned a lot about various areas that we were working on in education, healthcare, public safety, economic empowerment. We had a team really trying to engage corporate America on understanding the benefits of working with and helping to improve the dollars that get to HBCUs, for example, the historically black colleges and universities.

We had a team working closely with a variety of organizations that really championed second chance, fair chance hiring for people who have paid their debt to society and who, frankly, studies show make better employees, more loyal employees, and you're doing yourself and society really a favor by providing jobs.

We saw a lot of companies learn about these things and begin to change their policies.

Now, a lot of what we were doing in the fellowship was more outward facing than inward facing, but all the companies that are participating have something else to talk about when they're talking about their ESG filings, right? A lot of companies want to say, "Look what a great thing we're doing for society." In doing those great things, you're much more interesting to the best employees. Young people want to work with companies who are doing great things, and those companies now have something that they're doing that they can say that they're doing.

Diane Flynn: Ultimately, you're saying all of these efforts enhance their ability to attract a more diverse employee base, to retain them, because they're presumably more engaged, and hopefully to advance them. Are they doing anything special to help once they get more diverse individuals in their workforce? Have you seen some really effective programs to help them advance?

Kim A. Thompson: I think there are a lot of things that companies can and should be doing to both attract and retain people, as well as what they need to do more broadly to make their companies more inclusive. I mean, in terms of making the company more inclusive, I think making diversity, equity and inclusion a way of working, a part of what you do every day, and not just something off to the side is critical.

Having a strong and respective DEI C-suite leader and a team behind them to make sure that the DEI leader and his or her team or their team, that person is fully included in everything that the company does so that DEI is included in everything the company does, making decisions on which holidays the company gives as days off, as well as looking at the company's policies, looking at how company recruitment and promotion decisions are made, all of those types of things. Having that DEI person in the room can really make a difference. But also making sure that everyone in the company does a good amount of unconscious bias training and even testing to make sure that people understand that they have unconscious biases. By the way, that should not be a one-and-done kind of thing. It has to be periodic and ongoing.

I think making DEI also an important part of every leader's annual plan with real actions and really creating incentives to meet those DEI expectations. And maybe also create disincentives to miss them. For example, don't promote anybody who's not meeting or exceeding your expectations with respect to your DEI efforts.

Also, I think consider having at every annual review meeting and all the promotion meetings someone in the room whose sole job is to look for unconscious biases creeping into the decision-making. I also think it helps to have a really strong ethics team who people trust so that if something happens that someone believes might be inconsistent with a company's DEI efforts and values, it'll get reported, it will get investigated, and it will get properly dealt with. A lot of this is sort of tone at the top, and you don't want to get lost in middle layers of management, but it really needs to permeate throughout the entire organization.

Chris Riback: Kim, you just outlined an entire org structure of how to set up and then maintain an inclusive environment from CEO leadership, a C-suite leader who's focused on this, a team behind that leader. You then talked about various ways to infuse it throughout the organization, training, promotion, schedule, annual review, ethics. I mean, you just in 90 seconds gave a complete outline of how to structure this type of function through an organization.

At the very end, you touched on my question, top-down versus bottom-up. could you talk about the balance in terms of making this type of approach that you're outlining, making it effective in an organization? What's the role of top leadership? What's the role of bottom or middle-up energy and action, and any tactical, practical steps that you've come across to help move C-suites and move boards towards the type of action that you're talking about?

Kim A. Thompson: I think that it has to be both. It has to be all of the above. It has to be top, middle, and the lowest levels within the organization, in my view. The tone at the top is so tough. If you don't have the right leader to begin with, you're never going to get that tone at the top. But once the top leader understands if he, or she, or they decide to make sure that everybody understands the unconscious biases that they have by taking unconscious bias tests, and there's that Harvard test that you can take online, there are all kinds of tests that folks can take to understand where they are, they can infuse at the layers below them the need for dealing with racial equities and for really needing a diverse workforce. But I think at the lower levels and at the middle levels, it's equally important for them to understand. That's why I think it's actually important for everybody at an organization to understand their unconscious biases.

Then, for senior management to create a system that creates incentives in terms of maybe even having senior management people have a required goal for meeting certain KPIs with respect to diversity and inclusion, and it will obviously depend on the organization. But one of the things you could do is, for example, have certain senior level management positions have a responsibility for seeing to it that lower level and mid-level people who are bringing diversity into the organization, be it racial diversity, LGBTQIA diversity, or veterans, or women, or in any other way, making sure that they are doing all they can to bring them up in the organization, giving them the mentorship and the support that they need so that their teams... You're almost giving a positive incentive for having a more diverse team.

But, I do think also that even taking the steps and making sure that you're taking the right steps to attract and bring in and then promote the more diverse workforce is critical. That includes even making sure that you're recruiting at the right schools, like the HBCUs, or even connecting with the minority student organizations at predominantly white institutions as well as, obviously... I think I mentioned earlier hiring or really considering bringing in more returning citizens or doing more fair chance hiring, which I think can also tend to bring in a more diverse population.

Then, when you bring them in, make sure that at every level you're providing professional development that's specifically designed for your more diverse populations, perhaps dividing your diverse populations into the groups that will have similar interests and backgrounds that may lend themselves to grouping certain types of populations, diverse populations in certain types of leadership development and professional development programs.

Then, I guess, lastly, making sure that you have inclusion networks that are truly inclusive. If you have a white male middle management who really wants to be an ally to black professionals, please let them join the black inclusion network and make sure that they are welcomed with open arms.

Diane Flynn: Yes. I am a white woman, and I sit on a lot of Black ERG councils. I love them, and I always feel very welcome. I feel that it expands my worldview greatly, so I totally agree.

I want to address some of the pushback we've read recently. When you talk about incentivizing people to create more diverse teams, that gets into some fears about quotas. When you talk about special programs for underrepresented groups or diverse populations, that's exactly the work we do. We run six-month leadership programs, typically for women and underrepresented groups. All of our clients are saying, "We have to be careful who we market this to now because of the Supreme Court law. It has to be open to all." Finally, I've read recently that Disney's governing district in Florida slashed all DEI programs saying they spent millions to meet DEI quotas, and that, "Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal." How would you respond to this backlash?

Kim A. Thompson: It's funny because I live in Oakland, California, and California, I'm trying to think, more than 15 years ago passed a proposition. It was 209. It became part of California's constitution that essentially prohibited affirmative action. Some will say, "Well, that's odd in California, a very progressive state." In many ways, I think a lot of us who are perhaps more progressive in California found that to be surprising and disappointing. Yet, organizations in California have found race neutral ways of nonetheless looking at ways to be more inclusive and more diverse.

DEI is not about taking things away from straight white people and handing them to BIPOC people and LGBTQIA people. It's about being inclusive. It's about embracing the diversity of the broad community that you're in.

Diane Flynn: What would you say to those leaders who are saying, "We have to stop doing this"?

Kim A. Thompson: In my view, you don't have to stop doing this. I think what you can do is have those programs and not make the decisions on who to hire, not make the decisions on who to promote based on race, but create opportunities for everyone to start at an equitable place. And if you're bringing in people who have had less opportunity in the past, you're trying to create an even starting point, an equitable starting point.

I'm sure you've seen that picture of What Is Equity? There are three people looking over a fence that you can't see through. They are standing on a hill, and one person can see over the fence very well because that person is tall and is standing at the higher end of the hill. Then, the next person may be on their tippy-toes and on a little stool can barely see over the fence, too. Then there's the third person who's the smallest person, and they happen to be standing at the lowest part of the fence and can't see over the fence at all. That is inequitable.

But let's say they weren't standing on a hill. They were standing somewhere that was flat, and let's say they all were the same height or were all given stools to be the same height. That's equity.

When I see programs designed specifically for specific populations, what those programs are trying to do is create an equitable starting point. By the way, if there are straight white people who are also starting out at an inequitable place, I would say that those folks should also be included in those programs. But I know that racial inequities and inequities and unfairness with respect to the LGBTQIA community continue to exist and we need to address them so that people are starting off in the business community at a fair and equal footing. My personal experience is, as a Black woman, bear that out that even black people of great privilege like me see racial inequities all the time.

Chris Riback: Part of your discussion was that this effort is not about quotas and it's about increasing.., I took it as increasing a level of understanding, maybe seeking, and identifying potential resources in new pools of opportunity, and maybe more about evolving awareness and a sensitivity or an awareness to the benefits and opportunities of inclusion than maybe existed previously as opposed to setting hard and fast limits, rules, quotas, et cetera. That's how I took what you said, which in a way is a strategy of helping evolve hearts and minds.

I'm curious if you have had both the opportunity and the challenge to do that in your career, particularly with business leaders, with A CEO, with a very senior manager. And that maybe somehow through your efforts you brought them to a different level of understanding than you felt they were at before. Have you had that experience? How did you do it? How did it work out?

Kim A. Thompson: I've had that experience actually on many occasions. Frankly, in 2020, at the time of the awakening, I'll call it, I really felt the need to share my experiences as a Black woman in corporate America who on the one hand has been included in everything and is viewed as the privileged person, but on the other hand is the person who understands what it's like to be an anonymous black woman.

I know that I'm this cisgendered straight woman with no disabilities, who went to the right schools, and my parents were a mother and a father, and they were married to each other. I'm in this certain socioeconomic class of paths. People who knew me in corporate America, many people from throughout my career knew me as that person and saw me as this person who, "Well, if she can make it, anybody can make it."

I shared with folks some of my experiences as a black woman when I'm not surrounded by people who know who I am and who treat me like the well-educated professional within a socioeconomic class, but rather instead treat me as an anonymous black woman, so putting your bags up in business class on a plane and being questioned as to why your bags are being put there without expecting a black woman to be sitting in business class, followed by a neighborhood security car in my own neighborhood, having a DWB, driving while black, driving a really nice car and stopped. Frankly, I have so many examples that are so clear.

On one occasion, one of the national airlines, I was the highest status because I had a global leadership role at PwC. I was traveling a lot. I was at their very highest status. They call people up first to get on the plane. I get up with the two other people who happened to be at that status, and the first guy, a straight- looking white guy, goes bleep with his boarding pass, and he's welcomed.

 I get up next, and I go bleep with my boarding pass on my phone. The guy says, "You're not that status." I say, "Yes, I am." He says, "No, you're not. Let me see your boarding pass." I show my boarding pass, and he cannot even see it on my boarding pass that the words are clearly there until I point them out and read the words out loud to him on the boarding pass. He sort of looks at me like, "Oh, well, I don't know why you're getting so angry at me or why you're reacting like this." I say, "I'll tell you why. It's because I look like this, and he looks like that." The he being the white man who was in front of me and me being the black woman.

I shared those experiences with folks and with a lot of my colleagues at work and on LinkedIn. Many of my old colleagues from prior jobs as well as many of my colleagues at my firm contacted me. Several folks in tears said, "I had no idea. I literally had no idea that you experienced that."

It wasn't to me about me personally as having experienced those things as it was to say, "That is what happens to black people in this country." And I just happen to be one of the lucky people who get to pop into the bubble of the well-educated professional of a certain socioeconomic class whenever... Not quite whenever I want, because sometimes I'm going to be anonymous, but I have the opportunity to do that often. Most black people in this country do not ever have that opportunity. Sharing those experiences, sharing the airline experiences, the person in the elevator moved to the other side, the DWB, the neighborhood security patrol, all of those types of experiences, sharing those experiences has helped a number of people gain an understanding, a number of people who I interact with-

Chris Riback: Yes.

Kim A. Thompson:...gain understanding.

Diane Flynn: We host Days of Understanding with companies, and I have learned so much through their stories, much like the ones you just shared as a white woman whose kids all got their driver's license. It was a really exciting day in our house. I hear repeatedly that that is one of the lowest days in many other households where you have to start worrying about the things you just described. So, thank you for continuing to tell the stories because they are powerful. You talk about how our existing societal norms reinforce bias. If you could wave a magic wand, what are three norms that you would like to see changed that you think would have the biggest impact?

Kim A. Thompson: Oh, there are so many. It's hard to come up with just three.

Diane Flynn: Oh, you have five then. Just name a few, a few that people can maybe walk away and think about.

Kim A. Thompson: The feeling that people who have spent time behind bars in incarceration are somehow less than human and less deserving of respect. In my view, if you've paid your debt to society, you ought to come back. By the way, I don't have any personal family members or people who I grew up with closely who are in that category, but I've made friends and learned about people since later in life and recognize the need. That's one that we really need to stop discriminating against people based on a piece of their background that is behind them.

Another is this feeling that Black and Brown people don't deserve spots at top universities and have only gotten in to top universities in the past because of their race. Frankly, I've heard some people say, "Oh, darn. Now that affirmative action is over, my kid, who's not Black or Brown, no longer has the excuse that they didn't get in because of affirmative action." In California, affirmative action has not been allowed for some years. University of California hasn't been able to use affirmative action in the decisions of bringing in students. I think calling, saying that affirmative action is the reason for our society's ills is definitely something we need to put away.

Not recognizing that systemic racism still exists in this country is something that I would really love for us to erase. If I were to throw in at least one more not feeling... Trans rights and LGBTQIA rights needs to be embraced and not mocked or put aside. It's amazing to me in this country, in this day and age that we are still discriminating against people for just being the people who they are. I mean, broadly speaking, across all of those examples that I gave, discriminating against people for being who they are, either who they are as human beings, who they were born as, and who they have always been, and/or making decisions about them based on a mistake that they made but that they have turned over a new leaf, those are just things that we need to stop doing.

Chris Riback: Isn't that at the heart of inclusion is what I'm taking away to be almost a pro humanity platform, is how I might characterize what I'm hearing from you.

Kim A. Thompson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Inclusion. If we were equitable, we would be including people. If we think about the diversity of this country... And by the way, this country is not getting straighter and whiter. It's getting much more diverse over the years. Frankly, I think if businesses really want to do themselves a favor in terms of thinking about who they're going to attract, who they're going to attract not only as their employees, but also as their customers and their clients, you're looking very narrowly if you're only looking for straight and white people. You're looking broadly if you're trying to look at the full diversity of the country. And as years go by, it's going to be narrower and narrower if companies are continuing to be not inclusive.

In my view, the companies and the individuals who are more and more inclusive are the ones who are going to be the winners in the long run, and we all want to be winners.

Chris Riback: We all want to be winners. Kim, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the work that you've done.

Kim A. Thompson: Thank you so much for including me in this podcast.

Diane Flynn: Thank you, Kim.