Episode 41: Building Inclusive Organizations : Insights from a Global HR Executive

In this episode, we sit down with Alex Martinez to discuss the evolution of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the corporate world. Alex shares his experiences driving change at companies like Nike and Yum! Brands, offering valuable insights for organizations looking to create more inclusive workplaces.

Chris Riback: Alex, thanks so much for joining us. We've been looking forward to the conversation.

Alex Martinez: Yea, thanks for having me and Chris and Alex, pleasure to be here.

Chris Riback: So we've got a combination of broader questions around your stories and how diversity has impacted you, and then of course we look forward to listening to what you have to say and following up specifically throughout. So on the broadest level, given the topic of the conversation, how has diversity shaped you?

Alex Martinez: It's a great question, Chris. Diversity has shaped me in so many different ways. I can really appreciate the complexities that we all have with us, the unique backgrounds, the experiences. Personally, I identify as a Latino male and I've had the experience of being born in the US but having a very distinct Latino culture. My mother immigrated from Mexico. She came over here and a lot of what I was taught growing up was around assimilation and figuring out how to blend in. But later, as I moved into my corporate career and started to really get some unique experiences, I then started to change a little bit and mold from that and really focus on less of assimilation, but more about being my, what I would call strategic authentic self. And so I learned really how to navigate that in a corporate environment using my unique experiences, but also starting to have a voice of my own and then also being able to give back to my community and really find ways to incorporate that voice of what it means to be Hispanic or Latino or Latinx and bring that to the work that I do.

And I've had the pleasure of getting to do that in the DEI space for several years and then years before that in the talent space. And I would say it's absolutely uniquely shaped me in so many ways. I've found a really unique intersection of getting to do the DEI work in the talent space, and I've been able to bring some of my experiences and the things that I've learned throughout my life into that work, and it's been extremely impactful for me.

Dr. Alexandria White: I’m so happy, Alex, that you said strategic authentic self. So I have a lot of friends who are first generation, their parents, similar story to yours, and they told me that their parents didn't want them to learn Spanish, they didn't want them be able to speak Spanish because they wanted them to assimilate, just like you said. And so when you think of strategic, authentic self and how you are showing up and how you worked with Nike and being able to show up, what did you learn about yourself and what did you want other people to learn? Because you were being strategically, you were being authentic and you were making sure your intersectionalities were shown. What were some examples of that?

Alex Martinez: That's a great question. I would tell you what I really learned to be was a voice from my community and sharing a very distinct opportunity to hear from my community, be at the forefront of my community and recognize that even being Latino, it's not a monolith, right? There's several folks who identify as Latinx who come from different countries, from South America, from Mexico, and when they come to the US they have a very different experience than I did, even as identifying as Latino because I was born here in the us I grew up here. And so what my mom instilled in me and my family instilled in me was making sure that I assimilated, but also maintained a lot of those unique aspects of my culture. And growing up now, one of the big things that I try to do with my kids is make sure they understand where they come from, make sure they understand that cultural heritage emphasize the importance of knowing more than one language versus just trying to assimilate and just trying to know English.

But it's also important, for instance, for my kids to understand, no, it's absolutely important for you all to learn new languages and that will help unlock so many different opportunities for you all. And I really had the opportunity, and not even just at Nike, but even in my previous experiences, to learn and gain a lot of knowledge. Even if I think about my experience in business school, have several foreign exchange students or students that would come from different countries and they would come study in the US and their experience was very different than my experience or others that maybe grew up in the us, but yet we shared a very similar affinity of knowing two different languages or sharing in that cultural heritage in many different ways or having a lot of those similarities. And I think it's very similar to a lot of other underrepresented communities where communities are seen as a monolith in certain people's eyes. But the truth is there's varying complexities of that. There's so many different unique aspects and experiences that people from different countries have that they bring with them. And seeing that in a corporate environment has been extremely enlightening. And that's one of the things that I continue to focus on in my work every day.

Dr. Alexandria White: So speaking of a corporate environment, our listeners are change makers in corporate, they are business leaders. And so on the corporate side of that, we know that people from Latin America, Spanish speaking countries, they are making up the workforce, right? You can go on Indeed or LinkedIn and you get extra consideration if you can speak multiple languages. And so I want to hear that corporate part when it comes to the Latinx community. What was Nike's strategy in dealing with the increase of making sure that people from the Latinx community show up? Can you tell us a little bit about that in regards to DEI?

Alex Martinez: Yeah, absolutely. I'll even spend some time talking about it from a talent perspective because one of the big responsibilities I'd had even before coming to Nike, think about my experience at Young Brands where I was responsible for global mobility, I was responsible for bringing executive level talent pretty much across the world. And so you'd have opportunities for advancement, for talent to go lead a region or lead a new part of the organization in a different part of another country or another strategic region for the company. And what I found in that is if you have additional languages, if you have skills that revert back to the culture and where you came from, that uniquely positions you and gives you an opportunity to go do some really important work in another part of the world, whether that's at a company like Nike or Walmart or PepsiCo, these types of companies have global opportunities.

They have global operations all over the world. And so if you carry with you a unique aspect to your personality or to your resume where you can speak multiple languages, you can go do that. You can go be a leader within Latin America, for instance, if you speak Spanish, you can have the opportunity to go work in Europe because a lot of the countries there do have Spanish speaking opportunities. If you speak French, I mean that can take you to South America, that can take you to Europe, that can take you to Canada. You have an opportunity that's limitless of getting those experiences and then taking those experiences and then bringing those experiences with you to your next role. And it's very important because as we think about what truly makes individuals, global practitioners, it's having the opportunity to run operations in different parts of the world. It's getting the opportunity to speak the language, immerse yourself in those cultures. There's a cultural awareness component that comes to defining and identifying future potential and future leaders. And if you have the opportunity to do that or you have the growth mindset or the learning curiosity to go do it, then I highly encourage leaders and executives to take on those opportunities.

Chris Riback: Alex, how do you advise executives to balance the opportunities that inherently come with diversity that you just described? Diversity of thought, diversity of experience, diversity of workforce, greater access to a wider range of individuals and opportunities, and all of the benefits that you just described, balancing that against the pushback that is occurring particularly increasingly lately, that for lack of more specific or accurate language, is generally wrapped up in a phrase like anti woke or not wanting to be too woke or this is about running a business. This is not about creating social change. That's the role of business. And maybe it's not, but you're identifying some specific business benefits that come with diversity as you've described it, and yet there is increasingly cultural pushback. How do you advise executives in terms of that balance?

Alex Martinez: Yeah, it's a great question, Chris. I would tell you, if you think about how businesses operated, how businesses grow, there's multinational aspects to a lot of different businesses. And so the business needs to identify and organizations need to identify with the countries, with the regions, with the parts of the world in which they operate. And if they can't truly understand who they're attracting in terms of customers, suppliers, who they're servicing, who they're trying to attract to help grow the brand, then you can't truly be inclusive of the communities in which you want to operate. And so my response to that would be it's extremely important to gain those various diverse perspectives, really understand the unique nuances of your different customers, understand what it's like to operate in the Middle East, if that's going to help grow a certain revenue stream. If you're trying to grow the business in a particular sector that's growing, that's accelerating, how do you make sure you get ahead of that?

And it's truly understanding either where you're operating or any particular customer that you're trying to attract. And that just goes back to being a strategic business advisor. And I would tell you, I've seen so many examples of businesses that do it right, and they might not necessarily be thought of as a global brand or as a business that operates successfully outside of the us. But the truth is, if they want to do that, you have to have diverse perspectives, diverse cultural heritage. You have to have people who bring just a varied amount of experiences and backgrounds to the table to have those conversations and to really engage that discussion so you can help figure out how to grow the business, or if a part of your business is struggling, it's important to have those diverse perspectives and thoughts at the table to figure out, okay, how do we come about this in a different way? How do we problem solve?

Chris Riback: Did you ever have an executive challenge you or challenge those ideas or challenge the process? And how did you handle that?

Alex Martinez: Yeah, I'm trying to think of a specific example, but I haven't necessarily had anyone challenge me on that thought. I think what good business leaders do is they understand the business case of diversity and the need to grow their business.

Chris Riback: I mean, that's what I heard. You're talking about basic obvious business tactics, like understand your customer base, understand new markets, understand segmentation even in banking from a financial security point of view, I'm sure there's a whole process called know your customer that's all about financial security. You're talking about it slightly differently, but the phrase that was kind of going through my mind as you were talking was yeah, know your customer and your customer is going to be of every background and every experience. And if you have a product or a service and you are seeking to offer a market to those customers, why wouldn't you want to have every tool at your disposal to be able to understand those customers? And obviously there are workplace and getting the most out of one's workforce elements as well, but it was certainly interesting to hear you characterize the customer benefits.

Alex Martinez: Yeah, and one thing I would add to that, Chris, is I tend to really go back to my consulting mindset and it's bringing a data-driven approach first. So making sure as we think about new lines of business, as we think about attracting new customers, what are those drivers? What are those key themes? What are we seeing in the data? And do our internal capabilities match those growth trends? Do they match those demographics? Do they match where the business is going or where the business needs to go? That's the first thing that I think about. It has to be a conversation where we start with the data first. And what I have found is when you do start with data first, whether that's the workforce, data demographics, customer segmentation, those types of analytics that you have at your disposal, it provides a lot easier of a conversation with executives and individuals who might be questioning the idea of starting with the DEI mindset. But if you start with the data first, then you immediately make that connection to what are the trends, what are we seeing, what haven't we thought of? And that invites psychological safety with that individual, and the conversation just is a lot smoother.

Dr. Alexandria White: So we got to talk about the customer. Know your customer has a lot to do with DEIB, diverse equity, inclusion and belonging. And I'm going to give a story first, and while I'm doing that, I would love an example of you knowing your customer in any of the companies that you worked on. Yesterday was the Super Bowl, and I watched the Super Bowl for the halftime and the commercials, and the one commercial is from a new soda called Poppy, P-O-P-P-I. I'm giving them a shout out. And Poppy's commercial, they talked about the future of Poppy, the future of soda, and that it is no longer just your regular soda. It has probiotics, less sugar, and they had young people bopping in the commercial, and that made me 40 something years old. Well, I need to drink Poppy. It's the new hip soda. And so when you're thinking of knowing your customers, and for the business leaders that are looking, poppy was spot on. That was a young commercial, the future of soda. It's not your mom's or your grandmother's soda anymore. And so when you think of knowing your customer, millennial, gen Z, all of those rushed out to get the new poppy. And so I want you to give me your version of Poppy that you have used in your work that maybe others can learn from and how knowing your customer has paid off.

Alex Martinez: I love that example. And yes, I did get to see that Poppy commercial because I think most of us were able to catch the Super Bowl yesterday, and I did also love that Poppy commercial because it felt fresh, it felt new. I'm always a huge fan of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper. I love the ads that they put out, and obviously they always have a big presence during the Super Bowl. And I think you're also starting to see some of those brands try to attract those customers as well, right? If you think about, okay, low sugar content or something that's hip, something that's new for exactly. And Poppy provides an alternative, right? If you think about health conscious consumers, you think about the mindset of Gen Z, or I'm even thinking about Gen Alpha following that. It is much more around social responsibility, it's health conscious, it's DE.

I mean, every time I have a conversation with somebody from a younger generation, the first question that's asked is, what are you doing in the DEI space? What are you doing around social purpose? What are you doing around sustainability? And so if a company is not well positioned or even thinking about any of those topics, then you're already leaving out not only a growing and at some point will be the majority of the workforce in the coming years. As you think about baby boomers and others starting to come out of the workforce, it's a very unique time to make sure you're attracting that new customer. And I think Poppy is at the forefront of that. My personal experience would be obviously being of the Nike brand and seeing how well that brand, and you think about Nike, Jordan and Converse, how it is always at the forefront of thinking of Gen Z.

And I would even tell you Gen Alpha, and that's why you see the marketing power of a big brand like that focused on social responsibility, focused on DEI, making sure that ads, that anything you see that's identified with a brand is all inclusive and shows all walks of life across the spectrum so that individuals are seeing themselves identifying with that brand so that they can see themselves having that brand, drinking that soda. And I think it's extremely important as we think about the shifting demographics of the workforce, and you do have Gen Z, you have Gen Alpha starting to come into that workforce, at some point, they will make up the majority of the workforce. So if you're not attracting, you're not appealing to that consumer, to that customer, then the organization is doing itself a disservice.

Dr. Alexandria White: And to our listeners, I think Alex is the first person on all of our podcasts to use the term Gen Alpha. And so for those that are listening, they are usually children of millennials like myself, and they are entirely born in the 21st century and the third millennium. So just FYI to the listeners,

Chris Riback: Was that for listeners, Alex, or was that your polite way of educating me?

Alex Martinez: It's also educating myself. I have an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old, and so I am thinking about their experiences as they're growing up, things that they get involved in their education. It's wildly fascinating to be in this time.

Chris Riback: That is for sure. Alex, my last question for you is what's an area of diversity that you would like to better understand?

Alex Martinez: I would tell you one of the journeys, and I always think about DEI as a constant learning journey. I never consider myself in any way A DEI expert. I'm A DEI practitioner, but I'm always learning. And for me, one of the most impactful but also wildly fascinating aspects of diversity is this idea of intersectionality, for instance, from my culture and my background, what it means to be an Afro-Latino. And I say this recognizing and celebrating that we are in black history month, but I also think about the experience of those that identify as both African-American or black and Latino, and what that intersectional experience really is and how those individuals identify or create almost their own culture within being black or being Latino. It's just something to be celebrated, something to be acknowledged, something to be recognized. And what I have found is there's just so many different intersections, and as the world becomes more open, more diverse, you're also starting to see, for instance, and I see this a lot with people I know, you see people from my culture not just always marrying or having spouses that are also Latino.

You see them marrying people from all sorts of different backgrounds in which what we're going to see is almost this blending of cultures and backgrounds and people sharing that as they're growing in their lives together or as they have kids. I actually think about in my situation, I have biracial children, and so what does that mean for the experience of my kids? And we're starting to see a lot more of that. And one of the things that I just continue to enjoy and just really uniquely love and get to accept and understand is just those unique intersections of different cultures. And I think a lot of that can be celebrated, and it's not even just during the big cultural months, like Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage month, but how do we celebrate that throughout the year? How do we celebrate that in moments that aren't necessarily designated for a specific affinity or cultural group? How do we think about celebrating the multitude and different dimensions of diversity throughout the year?

Dr. Alexandria White: Yes. I'm so happy you said that. I went to a Nigerian settlement in Puerto Rico, and it's called Loiza, L-O-I-Z-A. Oh, wow. You learn about how the slaves were sent to Puerto Rico. It is Afro Puerto Ricans, and it's nothing but Puerto Ricans that have my complexion. And when I went there, just a history lesson. And so for you to, I love that those intersectionalities with different people and knowing we are continuously learning. We are humble students of this work. Me and my partner Diane Flynn and reboot Excel, we don't call ourselves expert as well. We're practitioners, we're scholars, we're strategists. And so because this is a moving target and so appreciate your answer, and for our listeners, we never want you to think that this is a finish line, that we are continuously being humble students of humanity. Alex, what are you up to now? Is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know before we close out?

Alex Martinez: Thanks for the question. I have a wild fascination in the sports industry, and I have a couple ventures that I'm working on right now within the sports industry, but one of the things that I am actively pursuing is getting back into the talent space. And because I do find a lot of unique opportunity in the talent space to really help advance the DEI agenda, and if we think about the full talent life cycle, everything from acquiring talent and finding diverse talent in new places and spaces to helping mentor and develop that talent to continue to progress within an organization, you think about performance, you think about identifying potential succession planning, the full gamut of the talent lifecycle. I do find that in those dimensions, there's opportunity to really advance the DEI work coming from the talent mindset. So that is definitely what's next for me and what I'm thinking about. But again, if folks do want to connect with me, I'm always open to do that on LinkedIn. I love having conversations like this. I just appreciate the invitation to have this conversation with you, Alex and Chris and I welcome that with anyone who wants to have a conversation.

Chris Riback: Alex, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for having this conversation and your reminder about the importance of being lifelong learners.

Alex Martinez: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Dr. Alexandria White: Thank you.