Hey Va, fam. I can't tell you how excited I am to introduce today's for this week's guest, she is someone who I feel like I just don't know. I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't familiar with her work until more recently. But when I tell you I am now a super fan, I am now a superfan. Her name is Minda Hearts. Minda is a workplace and equity consultant.
She's also a best selling and award winning author of books like The Memo and Write Within, which both have become just Trevor treasure troves of insights and strategies and real world tips for women of color struggling to find their place in the modern day workplace. So you've got to check out Menda's books. However, she's also got a brand new book coming out as well that we're going to talk about called You Are more Than Magic for young adults, and that's going to be released the spring.
I think, like, right now it's out, you can go buy it right now. You Are more Than Magic. Menda is also a professor at NYU WAG. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC, and she's been featured all over the place, from ABC to Fast Company, Time Magazine. She's a sought after speaker for companies like Liberty, Mutual, Nike, Google, You know, no big deal. She's out there, and in twenty twenty, she was named the top voice for equity in the Workplace by LinkedIn. You can also check out
Menda's podcast called Secure the Seat. She is our podcast sister. Yeah, so definitely head over to menda hearts dot com and check out all of her incredible work. After the show, check the show notes. We'll have links to all of her amazing content where you can find her books. But for right now, Menda is joining us on Brown Ambition minda welcome.
Thank you, thank you so much for having me. Big fan of you and Tiffany, thank you for the work that you do.
Oh likewise, how long have you been in this space? And why haven't I heard of you? This is my I know it's my fault, but I want to know all about how I know people who are usually in your space have fascinating stories, and I want to hear sort of like your origin story of how you came someone who is now getting hired by the likes of Google and Nike to hopefully come in and help them fix and better retain and develop and grow women of color talent.
Yeah, well, well, thank you for highlighting my work, because, like you said, everybody may not have read the memo, they may not know it right. And sometimes as black women and brown women are were erased in different spaces. So it's podcasts like yours, it's us amplifying each other so that people know that this work exists, so we don't have to suffer in silence. But it really the
work that I started doing. I started back in twenty fifteen when it wasn't as popular to talk about, you know, how black women and brown women were experiencing the workplace. And it was shortly after I had read Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In that I thought, wow, you know, there's some great advice in this book, but it's not talking to me. It's not talking about the experiences that I'm having. And so I really just thought about, well, what about women in the work and why aren't we talking about
all women? Why are we just talking about women in dominant majority? And so I really just set out to say, let me start creating content around some of the pain points that we experience and I started doing that by a blog in twenty fifteen, and then eventually started doing these career boot camps in New York City around black and brown women how to negotiate stuff like that, and
then eventually the books came. But it really my origin story was sitting in my car Mandy crying after fifteen years of being in corporate America and saying, is this what my life is like? Is this what I have to do to survive in the workplace? And I wanted to make the workplace better than I found it, And that's exactly what I've been trying to do.
Wow. Yeah, So I mean twenty fifteen that's when we launched Brown Ambition, and I loved the idea that we were like and obviouslytificansight here, but she's always here in spirit.
Yeah.
I love the idea that the memo was taking off and broad Ambition was taking off. And you know what's incredible. I know you mentioned until more recently, maybe it wasn't as popular to talk about being black women and women of color in corporate America. But I've never been so proud of the work that we did back when in twenty fifteen, when it wasn't you know, as popular when the all the media attention wasn't there and we weren't on all the lists and stuff, because it was like
we set the groundwork and planted those seeds. Tiffany always uses that analogy of planting seeds so that when like, I feel like your phone must have been ringing off the proverbial hook. You know, after the summer of twenty twenty, it seems like a lot of because there's so few of us. It's like, okay, who's a person of color and who can talk about the workplace and about women and okay, men to heart's done, you know what I mean? And like who's podcasting about it? Brod ambition and like
two other people? Right, So I mean it must feel. How does that feel? How does it feel to now have like all this attention and do you feel like, okay, like I've laid the groundwork for this, I'm ready for this moment to capitalize lack of a better word, on this newfound interest.
Yeah, it's you know, Mandy, it's bittersweet, right, And my life did change a lot after the unfortunate death of George Floyd because to your point, when companies were starting to scramble and like, what are we going to do?
They're like, who's out there doing this? Right?
And when the old saying is if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. I was already doing this work, and it was I had the memo had came out six or months or eight months before George Floyd somewhere around that time period, and so it was just like the perfect culmination of Yes, I've been talking about this, and let's dig in more. Now let's move to some demonstration and not just talk. And so things change,
you know. I remember coming off the road in February of twenty twenty doing my last in person speaking engagement, and I didn't know what life was going to be like once COVID had kind of shut things down.
I was living in New York City and then.
All of a sudden things were a little slow, and then just the calls were coming. And I've been busy ever since.
In a way.
But what I'm happy about is we finally get to center black and brown women in the career narrative the way that it should have been centered all along. Right, So, now that I do have the microphone in many spaces, I make no apologies for it, because I'm like, this is what needs to be said, this.
Is what we're going to do.
And if there are women who haven't yet found their voices in the workplace, I hope that our stories will inspire them to activate their voice. Because we all have a voice, we just have to decide how we want to use it.
It's such crazy timing and like serendipitous timing that your book had come out right before the pandemic and the murders of George Floyd, Brown and Taylor and the list goes on tragically. Talk to me about your book, I mean, having come out before the pandemic, is there anything you would have written differently? Or if you could add a chapter today, what would you imagine adding to the book now, having now come on the other side of this pandemic.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because before the Joy Floyd murder, companies would they'd be like, well, what are you going to say first? You know, give me a script, like we you know, racism doesn't exist here, Our black women are thriving. They never tell us anything differently. I'm like, okay, but do they feel safe enough to tell you how they're really feeling that's a different question just because they haven't said anything. And so for me, it was very
much kind of this push and pull. And then once that situation happened in twenty twenty, then companies who were like afraid to have a conversation or buy the books for their ergs were like, wait, come on in, come talk about it, talk.
About it at its full extent.
And so I was like, Okay, now that you're ready to talk about it, we all should be ready to talk about it too, right, And it was just this weird kind of juxtaposition. And so for me it was again saying, what is the main thing? Has always been the main thing centering black and brown women in the workplace, And so I just doubled down even more on the content and it actually allowed me to write two more books.
I wrote Write Within and You Were More or The Magic during twenty twenty and then they came out in twenty twenty one in twenty twenty two. But those were an extension of the memo because I thought about, Okay, what are the rules to engagement, right, what are the office politics, how do you build your network? All of the different things. You're not going crazy? I want the memo to affirm you, but really the extension of the memo was right within to say, you've been exposed to
all of these racial experiences. You may not understand how much it's harmed you, but you can be free of that right because we want you to be your healthiest life. You're not going to be able to be authentic and do the office politics if you haven't actually tapped into what's going on and how you're feeling about the environments that you're in.
That's part of what you can control.
And so for me, I often thought about the memo what I'd add, But I'm like, you know what the extra chapter is right within the act secure chapter is you were more than magic you?
Okay? I didn't realize the right Within came out after the memo, so you just like, don't sleep.
I guess there's a little bags under my eyes.
Yeah, I mean that's still two books in two years, my goodness. So okay, talk about the right within?
What?
So what's the take on that? Is that more, here's actual actionable strategies on sort of like how to survive. You know, now that we kind of all know what the issues are, now, here's how to survive and thrive right within.
I took it from Lauren Hill's how you going to win if you ain't right within?
And I thought about, what are the things that.
So, for example, when I was in my former life, I spent fifteen years in my industry and there wasn't a day I didn't go to work while I wasn't racially aggressed in some way, shape or form, macro or micro. But I had started to normalize the behavior, right, so when someone would say, oh, the black girl or this or that, any kind of derogatory type of experiences, I'd be like, Oh, I guess that's just Scott being Scott today, right. So I just learned to sweep it under the rug.
And I didn't realize how damaging that was to me in my life, how I saw myself, my worth. And then you think about the people you go home to or that you engage with that love you, they're not getting the most healthiest pieces of yourself because you've been in this harm this fight or flight survival mode. And I really wanted black and brown women to think about
what freedom looks like. Freedom from being the angry black woman, the feisty latina, the docile agent, like we can't control being free, no longer confined by those things, and so right within was the inner work. And I talked about how I had experienced so much racial aggression in the workplace that I started to get panic attacks and depression, and how I sought to find healing. I invite women to heal from those experiences, so we don't take them with us.
Yeah.
I think the hardest thing about the twenty twenty, just twenty twenty in general, and the pandemic and everything was not was sort of having to confront all of that and to acknowledge sort of what you had been through. And I mean, your experience sounds truly horren this. I felt like I had the fortune of working at companies that were a little bit better than most. It seems like at at least not you know, egregiously, it wasn't
like a lot of egregious racism. But then even for me, I think there's like the reflection time and what did you go through and kind of acknowledging it that can be really painful and that can make you, like you mentioned earlier, these companies now want us, Oh we're gonna we want to hear about it now. Talk to us. We're ready to acknowledge it. But for me, it's like, but are we are we ready to talk about it black women? You know? And do we have to do it on your time?
Yeah?
That part, you're ready, But like, this is traumatic and painful and not necessarily something that even we've confronted internally, you know. So for those of us who've maybe it's been you know, I'm not saying that everyone had those points of reflection and came to their aha moment in twenty twenty. Maybe you've been working on it since then, but it's been a couple of years. So I mean, what kind of advice do you have for those of us who now have acknowledge it and it may feel
like we want to start healing. What can work? What can help?
Yeah? You know, one of the things that I hear from a lot of readers of Write Within is that they didn't even realize they needed to heal because they had normalized all of the experiences be it. You know, we've all been to the doctor and the doctor will say, where's your pain point? Is it a ten or is it a one? You know, and we all have those experiences. But if you only have experienced a three in the workplace.
Those threes add up and it's painful, right being mistaken for the other black women every day, or someone not giving you an opportunity to use your voice, or being overlooked for the promotion. All of that is painful, and we often know the reasons why it's that way, right, But what do we tell ourselves? You know, just work hard, just keep your head down. This is what it's like for black and brown women in the workplace. But we don't have to pass on those old tools of survival anymore, right.
We want the next generation in our current generations to have the tools they need to thrive and not just survive.
But we first have.
To acknowledge that harm has been caused. And so one of the things that right Within is a little bit different than the memo is that I provide a lot of different frameworks for when you're One thing I call Mandy healing while in hell, because not all.
Of us are able to leave where we are right now.
We can't just quit, But how do we still focus on the things that we can control?
Right?
But first of all, the number one point is acknowledgement. You can't heal from what you're not willing to confront. And I think for some of us, we never even called it racism because it was never even safe to call it that in the workplace, right, even to utter that something was racist up until two years ago. We you know, it's funny, dominant culture in the workplace will say, don't play the race card, don't make it about race, and then after George.
Floyd, let's make it about race. Let's talk about all the things.
So it's these weird things, and as you know, black and brown people, people of color, we just it's a very jarring to be in this situation and we're trying to figure out what all this means for us. And so right within is that soft place for black and brown women to land. We just need that space to be able to land, to be able to be thoughtful. I even talk about therapy and how that was a very big part of my healing and still part of my maintenance.
Okay, ba fan, We're going to take a quick break and be back with more of my conversation with the incredible men to Hearts. All right, we are back. Here's more of my conversation with Menta Hearts. So you talk about therapy, and I think one of the things that is important in healing too, of course, is talking to experts and finding the right therapist, and that's also a journey in and of itself.
You know.
One of the things that I found was I didn't realize I had kind of reached my patience limit for talking about race issues at work and women and how companies could how my company in particular could be doing better because I had been talking about it and I was like kind of like resentful about it when it was a summer of twenty twenty and I was like, you know what, y'all deal with this? And then within
the next eight months, I was gone. But for women who are at work and maybe they've got some energy or they feel like, Okay, maybe I'm ready to talk about it, how do we make it? How do we
protect ourselves? You know, if you want to spend time, whether it's you know, doing the town halls or talking to your managers or trying to make things better, like you said, for the generation to come in the workplace, how do we protect ourselves in the workplace, and even if we're ready to talk about it in the company, says they're ready to talk about is there anything we should be you know, weary of or just kind of be watching our backs a little bit, you know.
I think that the one thing that I always say is that we have options, and I think sometimes as black and brow women, we feel like we don't have options, that we just kind of have to go with status quo. And I think now we're at a position where we can say what we mean without saying it mean. So what I mean by that is, if we do want to engage in race, class, gender, whatever the case may be, whatever intersection, we can decide that that's what we want
to do. But if we feel like we want to tap out, we don't want that, let the DEI person or somebody else handle that. I'm going to be over here doing my work and doing my own healing.
Then we also.
Should give our self space to do that as well. One of the things that right within in the dedication, it says to black women who were told they had to be strong for everybody but themselves, it's time that we no longer have to center everybody else's experiences if that's not congruent with what we want. And I think we can create the boundaries. Part of healing, in my opinion,
is creating boundaries with people. So letting people know what good likes, good looks like to us, So if we don't feel comfortable engaging, we can use language like, you know, I don't feel like this is a psychologically safe environment for me to have this conversation right now, but when I'm ready, I'll be happy to let you know that, right And I think again, a lot of our colleagues, Mandy, they will tell us in a heartbeat what's working for them,
what they don't like, the copy papers out, there's no more filters, the coffee maker, you know, like they have no problems saying what.
They want to us.
And I feel like it's time for us to recenter and say, you know what, here's what works for me and what doesn't because no one's gonna know that if we don't let them know what good looks like to us. And that is creating those boundaries. And so I talk about drawing your line in the sand, letting people know what's comfortable, and if you're not able to do that, who's your squad? And the memo I talk about your squad?
Who are those people that you trust inside the workplace that maybe you have the conversation with them and they can have different conversations. So just knowing again that there are various ways and resources that we can utilize that time. But we don't have to feel guilt or shame or a responsibility to be somebody's teacher and give them the homework, right, Like, we can really now start to center ourselves and figure
out what healthy looks like for us. And if healthy is not engaging, then that's not on the job description. I don't think any of us were hired. Many of us were not hired to be the educators of all things racial related in the workplace. Now, if you want to cut the check and this is an additional job role, then that's a different kind of conversation.
Yeah. For me, I think it was also just realizing that even if there was good intentions, you know, on the employer's part or people in the workplace's part, it was that sense of am I just the person who makes you feel comfortable enough to talk about this, Like am I that you know people say they have one black friend, am I the black work friend, or am I the senior leader black woman who you can sort of look to and say, well, we're doing something right
of Mandy's here and she's doing Okay. I have to unpack all of that. But if I think back on my corporate experience, is the higher and the ranks I got, the more it felt like I became that token, that like that pet. You know, there's this yeah, there's this whole idea of black women in the workplace kind of being a pet one day and then a threat the next day. And oh man, that is the exact thing that happened to me. I can't even I don't even know if I've unpacked that yet, but I totally agree.
It's like the willingness to draw a line in the sand, like you said, set a boundary and not talk, not show up until you're, like you said, psychologically safe enough to do so.
And we can create that for ourselves. And I think giving ourself permission to do that, right, because we know what it's like to walk on eggshells at work. We know what it's like when we're not creating boundaries. So let's flip it. Let's give it a chance, right. I invite people to think about, what if you haven't been
creating boundaries, what's that one step. What's that boundary that you can create to help center you, because we're not going to be our healthiest selves if we're contantly walking on those eggshells and pretending that some of these things
are not affecting us. Because I make the joke sometimes Mandy is like, no, we're not angry black women at work, but when we go home, some of our family members might see an angrier side, right, because you're you're taking all of that from one place that we can't express ourselves and articulate what's going on now we take it home and then the other part of it, it's chronic stress in our bodies, which is making us not be able to live our most healthiest lives on this planet
because of all that chronic stress.
So our lives, our life really depends on it.
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and our happiness, like our family's happiness, let's talk about you are more than magic. I love the concept of this book, especially being targeted toward young Black women. Right young. I'm thinking children like adolescent age, like teenage. I want every little girl and teenage girl to know that they are more than magic. Talk to me about that book and what it's all about and what made you want to write that next.
Yes, that's my third book that just came out with Penguin Tine. Thank you for it. I'm just so incredibly proud of you. Are more than magic. It's actually, I like to say that it's a younger, a young adult version of the memo. So I thought about what were the things that I needed to hear at fifteen, at thirteen, being you know, a black girl in a predominantly growing up in a white town, but often being the only
black girl on your teams, in your classrooms. Those sorts of things and some of those early experiences start to dictate who we show up as in our adult life, right, And I wanted to be able to talk to young girls to say, you know what, what you're doing right now, it's not magic. It's resilience. It's hard work, it's dedication, it's not luck. Right, You're not some magical faery for
people to look at. I know we use the term black girl magic as endearing, which it's very much is, But any black woman that's got where she is today is not magic, right. It's hard work, it's grit, it's a community invested in her, and we're so much more than that. And I just wanted young girls to know that they could take up space right now. They just have to decide how much space they want to take up.
They have a voice right now. What does it look like to have those conversations when their classmates says something that doesn't feel good, maybe it's about their hair or their name.
Or how they show up. What does how you respawn?
You know, you don't have to tie your worth to somebody's ignorance. You know, all the little things that we probably needed to hear, things like courage. But then also I wrote the book in a way in which adults in their lives are educators could also engage and read this book because we do. They do have voices, and we want them to have healthy tools to be able to engage and show up in the spaces that they
need to as their full selves, not shrinking. Because we know what it feels like as adults when our voices are shrunk in the workplace, and sometimes those things happen as teenagers, and we just want to make sure that that's not happening to them so that they can be their best selves.
Yeah, I love that idea. I think one of the things for me growing up was sometimes the sometimes the voices that tell us as young black women, to go with it, go with the flow, just be grateful. You know, here's your awards, So pat on the head. Aren't you magical? All that? Sometimes that can come from people who look like us, from family, you know, for me, it certainly did.
And I wonder, like, do you have any advice for this next next generation of young black women who I just feel like are going to be a freaking force of nature. And I hope they're not going to even know what imposter's inndrome is. They're just gonna be like, what,
You're not gonna pay me? Well, bye bye. But I worry a little bit about that, like that friction between generations that you have a whole other generation who was told a completely different way of how to be, and then you have this newer generation coming up who is gonna hopefully know a lot different because they're going to read you are more than magic. But like, do you have any advice for that or any thoughts on that.
You know what.
I'm glad that you brought that up, because as I wrote the book, I was constantly thinking about the generational gap right, because you think about for some of our some of our elders, they taught many of us be seen and not heard right, or sometimes they use language like speak up, girl, or shut up, or know you're playing.
You know, all these.
Different things that are you know, social media wasn't necessarily a thing for some generations, so they don't understand the pressure that these young girls may be under right now. And so instead of me showing up to the book and being like when I was your age, I decided to do a bunch of round table discussions with black girls across the country, and I sat and asked them questions about what they are experiencing, what are the pain points, and I wrote from there from their pain points, and
I talked about my experiences around those and things. And so one of the big one told topic is difficult conversations. And I talk to them about it because I told them, there's people in your life that may not have the tools they need to help you be your best self. So don't let them dictate you know, how you show up in the world, because it's not that they don't
want you to be seen or use your voice. They just might not know that it's possible, right, And so I also write to the parent and the guardians to say, you know, don't silence your young girl's voice. If she's saying something, hear her out right, so that you can have a diet. And I think that that's crossing the inner generational gap so that we can all sit together and say, listen, this is hard out here sometimes, but
we you deserve to be in this space. You deserve to be in every room that you're in, but not every.
Space deserves to have you.
And the earlier a young black girl, brown girl can know that the moment she can say peace, that she doesn't have to just stay here and participate in this you know, oppression, but that she can find those spaces that celebrate her right. Or when I was younger, my father always had to go and talk to one particular teacher because she was always singling me out as the
only black girl in class. So when those things happened, having the language to be able to articulate that sometimes things are race related, but it doesn't dictate your worth. And I think young girls just need to know that early on.
Yeah, and if it's not I love what you said, I want to like go back to that because I just feel like I want to put it on a poster and hang it on my wall. But it was about people around you may have the tools that they need to help you be the best vers something like that.
So such an incredible way to like a mind shift, you know, how to shift your mindset around Okay, even if someone around you is saying one thing, you don't always have to internalize that or going to people who may just be you know, your family or your friends
at school. The world gets so much bigger, you know, once you get out of high school, even through college and then the working world, and then finding the people who do have who are healthy enough themselves to be able to pour into you, you know what I mean, And like surrounding yourself, it may take a while for me. I feel like it took me years and years to collect the right little group of gems, you know what
I mean. But when you find your chosen family in that way, and it's like a collection of mentors like colleagues, new friends, but yeah, people who you sort of surround yourself with, who are who are able to give you what you need and echo back to you how much you're capable of that's such a beautiful, beautiful message. So what does this look like for you? I feel like you should be at every high school across America, like doing talks and stuff. But how are you reaching these teens?
Yeah, you know, it's been a different process having well when the memo came out, the book came out before the pandemic, then Right Within came out during the pandemic, and now you are more the magic.
It's a new group of people.
So the one thing that I've demographics, so I'm starting to I did an event with Black Girls Rock last week, which was really awesome. They have a Black Girl's Lead program, and one of their alums interviewed me about some of the topics in the book. But my goal is to get to every organization and school and have these conversations and also talk with parents and educators and guardians because I think that part of the success of young black and brown girls is making sure that.
We have the tools to be able to support.
Them in the ways that they need to and so again having these new tools so that they can.
Thrive and be their best selves right now.
But so, if anyone listening, if you know of any good organizations or sororities or fraternities that have you know, little sister or brother organizations.
These conversations need to be.
Had because now it's the time, right And like you said, I'm so excited with this generation because they're thinking differently, they're more inclusive and if they just have the right curation, there's nothing that.
They can do.
Yeah, and I And it's it's also I feel like on some level, maybe a little bit more difficult to convince. I'm a mom now. I don't know if you're a mom too, I have a young son. Being a parent now, I'm kind of shocked at how little I recognized how little this country, it can feel like countries, this country cares about kids in general, let alone black and brown kids. And the more I the more I, you know, look at the world differently through my son's eyes, I'm just like, damn,
why don't we do more? And I can just see already the challenge of convincing. I mean, it's one thing to convince a company to invest in like having a mend to hearts come and speak to their erg or whatnot.
But how like I'm just begging everyone listening to just think about how we are, like those organizations that are working with black girls and black girl empowerment and leadership and black You mentioned Black Girl's Rock, which is incredible, But how are we supporting and showing up for those organizations and showing that we care about the work, that we care about investing more in young women of color.
So ugh, I just want to put them all in like little snow globes and protect them from everything.
Ah.
You know, one thing I'll say really fast, Mandy, is that when I did the roundtables with the black girls from different parts of the country, and you know, one thing I asked them, what would you want people to know about you and how to engage in the regardless of where I spoke to them and where they live in the country. They said, they just want to be seen. They want people to treat them like they treat their
daughters and their sons and just be seen. And it broke my heart that even at thirteen and fourteen and twenty one, that they feel that like not being right. And I use this book as a protector, like, even on those days where they don't see you, know that we always see you.
You're always seeing and you're not hidden.
Yeah, make me cry. Minda but that's okay. Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful work with with Brown Ambition, Ba Fam. You have to go to mindeharts dot com and check out all of her incredible work. What else can we tell people about you? Go pick up the memo. It's called the Memo What Women of Color Need to Notice Secure seat at the Table. Also, we talked about the Rite Within and your newest book. You are more
than magic Mindeheart's Thank you so much for joining Brown Ambition. Hey, ba Fam, we could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown Ambition podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network. It's edited by the wonderful Emani Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos. Dennistimplinsky is our in house tech guru, and I am Bandy Woodrid Santos your co host, and I will see y'all next week six