Dreaming of Mindful Inclusion

2020 woke me up. It was a painful year. As a Mexican American working and living in Vermont, I feel responsible for stepping up and becoming a champion of diversity.  I realize now that my actions matter and decided to join a leadership role in the New England B Corp movement. 

The Boston B Local board is a bridge for the New England B Corps. During the pandemic, their Board opened up to include remote Board chairs in the New England region, so that is how I joined the Board. I am very proud of the Boston B Local board for their efforts to begin diversifying the Board. 

Vermont and the need for diversity
Vermont is one of the whitest states in the union. We at Global Round Table Leadership are part of a community of socially responsible businesses in Vermont and New Hampshire.  In these networks, I see a lot of goodwill from white allies in the business community, as they genuinely want to learn how they can bring diversity to our states.

First step for white allies
The first step for white allies in white organizations is to bring diverse JEDI consultants to your organization.  A diverse lens is needed to help in reexamining the current business narrative in predominately white states. White supremacy is embedded in our work culture and our organizations. Under the diversity and inclusion lens, behaviors that we considered perfectly normal prove to be quite toxic. 

Nourishing the soil first
Let me try a gardening analogy. Any New England gardener knows that you need to nourish the soil in your garden to promote growth. I believe that mindful, focused, culture change work needs to happen in mostly white organizations before welcoming diverse applicants into our region.  If a diverse team member joins a toxic work culture that is unaware of its white supremacist narrative, that diverse member will not thrive. Zoom out to an entire region, and you can see the current state of affairs in States where there is hardly any diversity.

There are extensive possibilities for positive change here. Suppose organizations commit to examining their current narratives to identify white supremacy culture and build clear action steps to relearn how certain behaviors push diversity out. In that case, we are beginning to do the deep work that our times call for. We must start to prioritize racial justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion at work. This is investing in nourishing and enriching the soil and preparing for a growth in diversity to follow. 

Work in progress
At the Boston B Local Board, we worked with a BIPOC women-led consultancy group for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion work to first understand our current narrative. From this, we have been building a living document of anti-racist practices for our mostly white Board. 

We are building guidelines for identifying white supremacy behaviors in our Board that come masked as perfectionism, quantity over quality, sense of urgency, and defensiveness. We have learned to recognize such behaviors thanks to Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun. 

Our current work is evolving. We still need to build both individual and collective accountability. This means having clear guidelines as to how we will have the crucial conversations when these behaviors do arise. How can we hold each other accountable to identify toxic behaviors to learn from each other?

I look forward to learning from this work, as the goal is to make the commitments actionable. I have a firm commitment to prepare the soil to bring more diversity to the Board.

Shared Leadership
This is why I am proud to be a Global Round Table Leadership team member; as a Certified B Corporation, we cultivate and nourishes the soil of work culture for diversity to grow.

We help companies to understand what it means to share leadership and to design for inclusion. We do this by bringing in a new paradigm to businesses. Shared leadership is inherently inclusive. It invites all voices, puts humans first, and gives us room to co-create together. 

A Brilliant Future
I visualize a bright future, where B Corps lead the way to show how we can welcome diversity and inclusion into the B Corp & business community. I envision a future where we can establish a way to do business that brings prosperity to all without damaging our habitat. I picture a beautiful world where my children and grandchildren can thrive. 

This is the perfect time to engage, to collaborate, to dream. Let’s construct a better dream together, one of a world that is just, diverse, and committed to building a sustainable future today.