Back with another conversation about DEI, about diversity, equity, inclusion. And it's a big topic these days because it is under attack in the United States and elsewhere around the world. And there has been a backlash to it. And I think a lot of the backlash has been caused because people who have not been marginalized have felt shame and have been asked to feel shame and have been asked. to examine their privilege and do things that don't feel good.
And Brene Brown said, and we quoted in this episode coming up, you can't serve while holding on to shame. And so if the goal here is service, if the goal here is to make a better world for everyone, then how do we deal with realities? How do we deal with history? How do we deal with the fact that some of us have unearned privileges? that we were born on third base with a silver spoon in our mouth, whatever.
So a conversation today is with Winitha Bonney who is a DEI expert, a consultant who comes into organizations and helps make them more inclusive to help people belong, to help them become more diverse. And what she talks about is that the heart of it is empathy. The heart of all of this is considering how other people feel. And that's a way of putting it. that takes the shame out of the equation. And I hope you really enjoy this conversation.
hope it helps you in your life and your organizations. And I hope it helps move the idea of empathy, of just caring for each other, regardless of political differences, this caring for each other, being curious about each other and wanting the world to be a place that works for all of us. So without further ado. Winitha Bonney, welcome to the Plant Yourself podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this conversation. There's so much going on in the world.
For those of you not watching the video, that was a face. There's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of strides forward. There's a lot of things that look like they're moving maybe backwards. Maybe we could begin by just introducing yourself. Yeah, so I've had a background working in corporate in a range of C-suite roles. I also have entrepreneurial background, so I've started several businesses.
When I exited the C-suite path, I then turned my attention to working primarily around diversity and inclusion. So at the meta level, it's really about change and changing culture. changing how we lead, changing how we do business. And then a lot of that work has actually focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. Hmm. So what in your background, your work background got you interested in diversity, equity and inclusion?
It these days it seems like it's a redheaded stepchild to things that people really care about in the C-suite growth, sales, profits, market expansion, global traction. What made you say this is where I want to go and plant the flag? I don't know so much if it was me planting the flag, but more like people planting the flag for me. So when I started my practice, I started with that work because I had already been doing that work out in the community when I was working in corporate.
So I was doing what we would call social or economic inclusion. work and I was doing that pro bono for many, many, many, many, many, many years. Um, for probably at that time, probably about 15 years. And so I already had an understanding of what inclusion diversity was. And, um, I guess people had sort of known me not just in my corporate work, but had known me in my community work for doing that. And so people started coming to me asking if I could do that in their corporate organizations.
And so. I'm a big believer in following the signs and doing the work that I've been called to do rather than the work that I think I should be doing. And that's where it started. think the roots of it was planted a lot earlier. So for whatever reason as a child I had grown up watching, my parents didn't... intentionally chooses for me, I would usually, you know, switch on the, you know, the TV back in the day when you turned the sort of dial and, seven channels.
Yep. And, you know, I watched a lot of things on the civil rights movement in the U S I think that planted a lot of seeds for me. And then I also had my own experience of, you know, racism as, a young child. And so I think those two things together then got me asking a couple of questions. And it wasn't until I moved to Canada and then to the US and started working there that I think for the first time I actually saw people that had similar skin tones and skin colors to me working in corporate.
And then that really, I guess, brought it up to a much more conscious level of... hey, actually in corporate leadership, I am the only these experiences aren't normal, like I assume they were. And I can either complain about it or I can do something about it. So I decided to come back to Australia and do something and do something about it. And so that's kind of where those threads came together. Yeah. So were you in the C-suite before you got to North America? No, I was in leadership.
I was in leadership roles. I was in senior leadership roles, but I hadn't quite got to C-suite yet. I was working with people, so being, so I guess their roles more were what you would call like vice president, so VP. So I was the right hand to them.
And so because I was privileged to be in those spaces then I was like oh actually there's a lot more, well there's still a lot of work to be done but compared to where Australia was at at that time this is back in 2007 so where Australia was back then I was like oh like It's like I saw my color for the second time. The first time was when I was in school. I was probably about six or seven years old and the second time was when I went to the States.
When you say you saw your color, what does that mean for those of us who have never had to see our color? Yeah, I guess a difference. So I remember when I was in school, I was linking arms with my best friend. I think I was like six or seven at the time. And for the first time I saw the difference, which was she had white skin, I had brown skin. I remember, remember vividly remember that moment. I was like, oh, I have brown skin because I operated in mostly white environments.
So unconscious unconsciously, my brain just didn't register that, I'm different. I have a different skin color than the people around me. So the second time was in the US, I was actually taking a dance class and the room was full of black and brown people, like full. I looked around the room and I was like, room is full of black and brown people. Everyone's got skin color just like me if not darker.
And I saw that and that made me very conscious and aware of like in the workplace the spaces that I had had seen it which was in the work that I was doing at the time as well as spaces that I hadn't seen it which was the career that I had to date in Australia so In Australia, when I was in these corporate environments, I didn't see a difference between me and the other people. But then when I was in an environment where I was... had the opposite experience.
It's like I actually saw the difference and that was the color of my skin. Yeah. So, you know, there's a there's a lot of, let's say, sort of, I would say, reactionary talk about like not seeing skin color. know, people, you know, white people are like, well, I'm colorblind. It shouldn't matter. But it sounds like to some extent that was a little bit of your experience that you like, like, this I'm not noticing. It doesn't matter where you like.
Did it not matter or were you just not picking up on ways in which it did? I was not picking up on it because it wasn't talked about a home. I would say we grew up in a very westernized home. In my culture, the nickname for it is whitewashed. So, a schlanken. So I, just, yeah. Which means that, you know, the other term is a coconut. So, you know, you're brown on the outside, but white on the inside. So whitewashed, being whitewashed is saying, which means like we're being washed.
white, so we live and breathe as a white person as opposed to our cultural identity. So that's not specific to Schlanken people, but it's, I guess, amongst POC, people of color communities. It's a term that's used. Some people find it quite racist, brown and black people included. And so I grew up in that environment and my cousins would often tease me. They would use those two terms, I'm a coconut or that I'm whitewashed. And I just didn't really think anything of it.
so, cause my cousins grew up in an environment in a community where there was majority black and brown folk in Australia. But I lived on the other side of the city and I lived in a white community and my parents are Christian, they're not Hindu and so. We went to a church and so just the environment that we grew up in, we didn't talk about race. We didn't have conversations around that. And I grew up in a very white community. I was the only person of color.
Me and a person called Esther, Esther was Asian. We were like the only non-white folk in our entire primary school. And I remember that because we took a whole school photo and I was like. Find the Brian Brown dot, that's me.
So I think when you are in those environments, you can tend to assimilate and it wasn't until I was older and I think particularly here in Australia, engaging more with First Nations communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, that I then started understanding the importance of culture through their eyes. through their lived experiences for myself of like, actually, what is my culture? What is my cultural identity? And asking questions about that.
So here in the US, think, you know, DEI gets simplified to everyone should have a chance. like, you know, so you look at the corporate website and you look at the stock photos and there's got to be the Asian guy and the black lady and the, you know, someone in a wheelchair. Like, that's like we're all but there's no there's not really any talk of culture. So it's like everyone gets to play in this westernized capitalist framework.
To what extent in the work that you do and in your vision of it is DEI about just getting everyone into the same room? Or are there conversations about the culture changing because of these inputs? It's kind of like... Well, inclusion is for everyone. It's just that the work looks different for everyone. So if we look at things from the context of gender and the binary lens, so male and female, inclusion actually means everyone.
What it means is just the work for those that identify as men is different to the work for those that identify as women. But inherently, both people need to do work. It's just the work is different. So in order for greater inclusion and greater equity and equality to exist for women, women also have worked. Women are not excluded from that. Women also have work to do, but it's a different kind of work to the work that men need to do. It's a partnering.
It's no different to being in a romantic relationship. There is dysfunction. Both individuals need to contribute towards unity and harmony being in existence. They both need to talk about things. There are compromises that need to be made and so forth. When I work with organizations, we look at things from the context of inclusion as a whole. And we look at things more from the context of changing the culture.
And we also look at what is the brand or the business, what do they have credibility to speak about? So not all areas of, not all identities and areas of marginalization are going to be relevant for organizations. think what a lot of them tend to do is when they try and create inclusion for everyone, that's actually where they stuff up because the leaders, the organization doesn't have that credibility yet to talk in that space or to do work in that space.
There is a learning journey that needs to happen first. And we also need to look at relevancy for the brand. So what is going to be relevant for a brand, for a femme, female-focused fashion brand? what is going to be relevant for them is women.
But within women, can then go into women, know, disabled women, we can go into First Nations women, we can go into black and brown women, and women who are carers, women who are parents, we can then start to look at that at a deeper level and actually layer those things through. But I think when organizations try to create inclusion for everyone, they struggle because it's just, it's so difficult. It's so complex. It's so nuanced. And we need to actually learn the work first.
And the way that we do that is we pick certain areas. We also give ourselves permission to do so. And we focus and we go deep on those areas. Once organizations go deep in those areas, and what I find is that they have the skills and the leaders have the skills to... create a culture of inclusion and then we can start to look at other areas. So one brand that I did a lot of work with, we focused on women, we focused on First Nations and we focused on people of color and we focused on pride.
So those are identifiers, LGBTQA plus and two-spirituities. In that, you know, we started with First Nations women, then we went to, um, to First Nations women and women of color. And then we, you know, and then we went to First Nations women, women of color and, uh, LGBTIQA plus FUG. And so in that, in that, you know, we, we stepped it out and that was probably like a two to three year journey. But by going deep in one area first, then we had the skills to then start to build on that.
So for me, that's how we look at culture change. And you do need to be able to really stay grounded in that because when you focus on one area, rightfully so, know, other communities will speak up and say, well, what about us? but there is a skill development that needs to happen that I think community often don't realize.
Because what I've seen with brands is that when they speak about anything and everything, all areas of marginalization, discrimination, that's when they stuff up, when they try to be provocative or break the status quo in a particular area, they have some sort of experience in that space first. So I try and identify what is the space that they've already been they've already been doing some work in.
And we start with that and we go deep in that and we build the skills and then we start to step by step go into the other spaces. So what you talked about, you know, the different contexts and different groups of people have different work to do. So what what what is the what is the different work that goes into these early stages of building?
know, like I I was was sensitized to all this around 2020 when, you know, the George Floyd murder made the news and You know, all of a sudden, like certain jokes couldn't be made or that, you know, right on the heels of that, Me Too movement and like, you know, a bunch of men were like, I don't understand the rules anymore. I don't hate anyone. I just I'm just.
Joking, I'm just, you know, where all of a sudden there were people that just clueless like the world is changing and I don't I don't understand it. What is the work that goes into those early stages of saying, let's let's embrace a. Rater, Diversity and Inclusion. I think it's empathy. think, you know, when we look at, what I found is that when we look at the work of inclusion really at its heart, it's about empathy.
think there's this, you know, having that ability to understand other people's lived experiences. You know, I've said racist things, I've said patriarchal things, I've said things that were discriminatory towards disabled folk. And when people have pulled me up on that, you know, it's deeply uncomfortable because no one wants to be a bad person. There is a lot of shame around that.
But what I teach people is that, be thankful, you know, be thankful to that individual for helping you and supporting you to stand in your integrity. I think most of us pride ourselves as to be a person of integrity, to stand, live and lead with integrity. And we we need support to do that. A lot of how the brain operates is from the unconscious, the unconscious mind. And so we don't often see things.
And so when someone brings things from the unconscious into the conscious, and supports us in that growth to stand, to stand more greatly in in, in, in integrity with a deep sense of empathy towards people. Yeah. You know, I had a colleague who's also in the D &I space and they say that, what have you got to lose? Nothing. By not saying that joke or not, it's not costing us anything. By not saying that word or not saying that joke, it's not actually costing us.
But the person who receives that, it's costing them. And so a lot of the times, the focus often ourselves. I can't say this, I can't do this, I can't, I can't, I can't, can't.
So on one hand yes I do feel like with inclusion, inclusion is all about liberation but then the sort of with inclusion with the work of inclusion there's a lot of paradoxical truth there is a yes and yes and and so yes what the work of inclusion is about liberation and on the other side People do have this sense of, I don't feel liberated to just speak and be me because I'm always cautious and I'm feeble of saying and doing the wrong thing because I might get canceled.
So my encouragement to people is just to be you. And if someone corrects you, thank them. Keep that in mind, do your best and move on. Like we don't need to make a big hoo-ha about it. You know, if you, I've gotten friends and colleagues pronouns incorrect and I apologize, I can feel the shame rising.
I apologize and I move on, you know, and that's been the feedback to me from those, from those colleagues when I've got it wrong, which is don't make a big hoo-ha when you make a big hoo-ha about it, it actually makes things worse. So apologize, correct yourself. and move on. That said, know, within, I've worked across marginalized, different marginalized communities, and I will say things are different for different people.
So what might be acceptable and tolerable for one person might be not acceptable and not tolerable for another person. So for example, here in Australia, First Nations folk come from different tribes and different clans and Some folk will say it's okay for you to ask what mob you're from. So what mob meaning what tribe or clan you're from. Other people will say that it's harmful to say that and that is linked to the stolen generation.
So children being taken away from their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. and being put into the care of white people and so therefore there's a loss of identity. They actually don't know who they tribe and their clan from because that has been erased. And so to ask who your mob is can be traumatic for people.
So you know some elders in the community will say you know what they've shared with me is that some elders have said that's okay and other elders have said that's not okay and you know And then I thought, well then don't ask. So unless that person chooses to share, I, I thought, well, this lot say this, this lot say that, well, is it important? Is it important to know? No, it's an individual is an individual.
If that's what they want to share for me, which is their sovereignty, if they wish to share that. with me or with others, they'll share it. And so, yeah, I feel like with the work, it requires deeper empathy. And I think with empathy comes greater consciousness and awareness. You've also got to look at things from a place of curiosity, like where does that stem, like where does that trace back to?
So... I think there was a museum in the States somewhere and for Black History Month they had in a canteen or in a cafe or kitchen within the museum they had some watermelon salad or something like that as a feature for Black History Month and they got a lot of hate for that. It's like you need to peel back the layers. What is the connection between black folk and watermelon? there is a history there around racism and then that links into slavery and colonization.
I think the work really is about empathy. It starts with empathy. It's about having greater empathy towards others. As opposed to being concerned about ourselves, like I feel shamed. I'm a bad person. I can't say this. I can't say that my, my, voice is silenced. Having greater empathy, having greater sense of consciousness about the human existence, not just our own.
Um, and then looking at things with a sense of curiosity, knowing that just because something happened 500 years ago or 200 years ago, doesn't mean that people are still feeling the effects of that. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, I'm thinking about a lot of my own interactions, you having moved to Spain, there's a it's like shaking, you know, shaking the kaleidoscope. There's a whole like new set of like people's characteristics that I'm fascinated by.
So, you know, when I hear different accents and I see different facial features and skin tones and heights, and I'm just curious about everybody. Right. some and, know, to me, it's a sign of respect to get to know someone. you know, where are you from? And I'm hearing that there are there are situations and that there are contexts in which that information maybe waits until you have developed an intimacy to to even begin.
Yeah, I think so where that so I have come to the understanding that when people ask where where am I from because they can hear an accent and then and the feedback that I've gotten is that they can't pinpoint exactly where that accent is from and then obviously my skin is brown so people are curious and I know that's them seeing the difference so probably unconsciously seeing the difference but wanting to have a connection to me so that that difference sort of sort of dissolves for them.
It's maybe perhaps more of accountability for them than it is for me. But I also know with a lot of folk, know, they don't see things that way and they get offended when people ask where they're from. And it's because, you know, they're very, they have this heightened awareness about their difference. They've had... you know, there, that comes with a sense of not feeling like they belong.
And when someone shares that, it reinforces that sense of you're different and you don't belong, you don't belong here. And so, you know, just, just like that, you know, like just like with that awareness, it's okay. let's, mean, even today with the Uber driver, like the Uber driver, I thought he was from the same country as me.
And I was so curious about, you know, is he from the same, same, country as I am and you know I really wanted to ask him and we just had a conversation I asked him how long you know because he said he shared that he had moved to Australia I asked him how long he's been living here I asked him you know where did you live before Australia and he said Bangladesh and I was like you know and then he said I'm Bangladeshi where are you from I said I'm Sri Lankan so and then we had a chat for that.
So rather than going in cold, know, just having conversation, we'd already been talking for a while before that in the car and then slowly, you know, going into that, but having connection first, I think, yeah. I'm really appreciating the. The separation you're making between discomfort and shame. So, you know, being in the States and watching the corporate world embrace D.I. in a, I think, rushed, clumsy and ultimately uncommitted way because it's all went away.
You know, a lot of the pushback was like. You know, the sort of like, you know, unconscious discrimination and, you know, unconscious bias and and this the feeling that was expressed by a lot of white people that I know is that we're you have to feel guilty. Right. Like I have to, you know, I'm I'm I'm diseased and I have to, you know, cure myself of the disease. And there was a lot of pushback around that.
And I think, you know, it's certainly just from a psychological perspective doesn't seem like a great way to get people to change. And yet, you know, the opposite of everything's great. I have, you know, I have I have no responsibility for systemic racism, even though I'm benefiting from it. Hey, I didn't do anything is also not moving the thing forward. And I love how you're talking about like.
when you let go of guilt and shame and you can just feel this momentary and let it go, that it doesn't have to be that bad. Yeah, know, shame, know, Brene Brown, you know, as I think a lot of folk know, like has done a lot of work around shame and which is all about all about us. And yet we have the same tension around we have we have attention. Shame. So shame and service. So on one hand, shame is all about me. And then at the same time, a lot of us have this desire to serve.
and the two are often in tension with each other. But we cannot serve whilst holding onto shame. We have to let it go in order to serve and serve more fully. So, you know, we've all inherited a legacy and it's what we do with that legacy that matters. But inherently we cannot... You know, that is the legacy of privilege. And we can choose in that moment to not stay in shame, but to let it go and to step into service. Actually, how can I be of service to people?
So, know, guilt and shame will just hold you back and keep you stuck. And that is all about us. You know, how can we show up for others? You know, we are humans on this, you know, strange planet called, called Earth. And we cannot survive as a human race if we just look out for our own race. If we just look out for our own kind, we have to be in partnership with others. And that is a partnership of compromise. Right?
Just like every other relationship in our lives, it is a partnership of compromise of... shifting here, they shift, we shift, they shift, we shift, they shift and at some, you know, it is evolutionary and so Yeah, so I don't think it's, I think the sort of go-to, particularly after 2020 with the Black Lives Matter movement was that, I mean, there are definitely folk out there that will say, yes, you should feel guilty.
My orientation is that if we are to coexist on this planet called Earth, we need to find a way to make this work. You know, we have to function, which means you've got work to do, also I've got work to do. So for white folk, it's actually around, well, let's understand the history until you fully understand the history, you don't know. Um, and it's a history that it is a legacy that we have. We have inherited. And so we need to do something with that legacy work in the justice.
Inclusion is a fancy corporate word for what this work is really about, which is social justice and human rights. And one of the key things that creates greater justice in the world, well, an approach to justice is what we call restorative justice. And that is a process of which two people come together to restore and to heal. So the perpetrator and the victim.
if it's safe to do so for the victim then they would come together in a process and it is a process of making amends essentially until that amends has been made people can't move forward it's human it's human psychology but when the person makes amends the irony is that they experience a liberation from the hurt and the harm that they have caused So we've inherited a legacy. And it's about what we do with that. With the country that I am from, we have a similar journey.
It's probably just a bit more fresh because we had a civil war for 20 something years. And it was essentially Singalese versus Tamil people. So in Sri Lanka, have Tamil folk, we have Singalese. We also have people that we call burgers, which are people that are Sri Lankan, but also have Dutch, Portuguese or French or English blood in them. And, but essentially it was Tamil people and single East people fighting for control of the country.
And, there was hurt and harm that was caused to both sides. And so the greater question for the country is can, can we exist? And until amends are made to both, to both folk. to both communities. Because there was hurt and there was pain and there suffering to both. just, you know, in that context. So when I look at, you know, white folk and black folk or white folk and people of color, because colonization didn't just happen between white and black folk, it happened all around the world.
You know, there are reoccurring there's a legacy that's been inherited by people. For some people that legacy has been good, for some people that had a legacy has not been good. And so how are we coming together to, in a restorative sense, know, create greater harmony? How are we coming together as people to partner together so that no one feels left out?
If you are in a family, If you are a part of a family and you genuinely love each and every single one that is in your family, but say you had a family of four and there were only three potatoes, would you ask for one person to miss out on a potato for their dinner? If that's all you had for dinner? No, you would as a family come together and you would ensure that everyone had equal equal parts, that everyone got fed. But the human race is exactly the same.
But what we've forgotten essentially in the human race is to actually love one another. And that is also what I'm talking about when I talk about empathy. We live in, as you talked about, capitalist society, which is me and me at all costs. And there are people that miss out. And that is a legacy that we inherit. So it's not about shame, it's not about guilt.
It's actually about, with the privilege that I have benefiting from these systems and the way that they operate, what can I do to ensure that other folk who miss out on those privileges, what can I do to ensure that they have access to those same privileges? That's got to come from a place of love. That's got to come from a place of empathy, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. So this is, you you said like you can't serve while holding on to shame or guilt doesn't really have a play. And yet.
So if the thing I do is I post memes. Right. And I don't. And but like, I'm not willing to give up my privilege. Like just speaking like I have, you know, some inherited money that allows me to live a certain way. I have an education that that gives me certain things. And I feel like like I'm honestly like when I look at the world as it is, I'm afraid to be in the bottom 50 percent. Right. It seems it seems horrible. It seems scary. It's like there's not enough potatoes.
And, you know, for me and my family, like I saw a meme that's meant to be very humorous. And it's kind of kind of punched me in the face and showed this, you know, this very young, beautiful, carefree white woman sitting on a stoop with like a latte drink. and says, you know, woman says self care is an act is, you know, an act of of solidarity or, you know, engages in no other acts of solid solidarity. Right.
So like, you know, when I hear you talking about like sharing the potatoes among the family, that to me brings up sort of a Marxist idea of redistribute of like significant redistribution. as opposed to sort of the identity politics of, you know, like differences. Like you're saying, yes, there's all these differences and we have to kind of include people and be diverse and engage in injustice. But at the end of the day, it's really about everyone getting potatoes.
Yeah, I mean, that's the way the system operates, is it disadvantages people based on identity. So there's so many studies that have been done, I think particularly around race, but we have all these perceptions that someone with, for example, someone with Down syndrome, cannot perform a job to a certain standard than someone who doesn't have, who's not Down syndrome.
So it's not so much redistribution, but looking at, you know, who is disadvantaged based on the way that a system operates and re-engineering the system to ensure that everyone has the same access to that. The reason why people don't stand in solidarity, the reason why people don't do anything is because they are fearful of losing out and fearful of liking what you said, being in that 50%, but in my experience, have, no one has ever lost anything for standing up for something.
We have all kept those things, you know, speaking up. I remember I had a dance company at one point and I remember going in Japan and my artistic director is Zimbabwean and you know he's got dreads, his skin tone is much more darker than mine and I had a little trouble at the border but I got through but I saw that he was you know, struggling at customs.
And so I could have just gone through on the other side and just kind of stood there with all the other dancers who'd all well and all the other dancers were much more line of skin than me, let alone him. But I knew in that moment, you know, he was being questioned, you know. So I went and I stood right next to him and I said to him, what's going on? how can I best support you? So rather me being rah rah rah rah rah, actually asking him from a place of he's suffering, to you not mine.
How can I best support you in this moment? And he said, can you try and work through this? Anyway, I did get a little bit heated and we then both sat in a room for a little bit. But you know, that to me solidarity is me willing to stay in the mud with him. You know, doesn't mean that You know, I still have my privileges. I haven't lost it on those privileges, but am I willing to sit to sit in the mud with him?
When we think about friendship, when we've extended the hand of help to our friends when they've needed it, have we lost anything? Have we been deprived of anything? For the most part? No, you know, we still have our jobs, our incomes, you know, so forth and things like that. And so, you know, fear is what often drives, drives fear and greed, you know, often drives a lot of, a lot of inequality.
So my experience working with different communities, also for me, working, trying really hard to, to stand in solidarity with other other communities whose identities are different to mine. I have never lost any of my things that I... Because the system is so complex, you know? I have not lost anything. I have gained so much of being of service to others. I haven't lost anything. I think, again, that's all about us and it's all about the ego. I want... people to thrive.
want I don't want people to suffer in the world. I don't. Why should they suffer? Why should you know, young girls be thrown into sex trafficking? you know, why? Why? Me standing up and trying to do something to help contribute towards alleviating that. It's not depriving me of anything. And I think that's where we've got it wrong.
So so another another fear that I think might have something to it is if you know, especially working in corporate environments where in the United States there are the legal system has set up the financial system. The corporation is a person is a legal entity. It has obligations to its shareholders. Mm. that sometimes, you know, wipe out what you might consider ethical obligations, at if it's not an expressive, you know, B Corp or social responsibility corporation.
it's corporate America, at least, and I don't know about Australia necessarily, rest of the world, corporate America has a culture. And in many ways, it's I imagine at odds with. First Nations cultures with indigenous cultures, with. You know, queer cultures that that may have like like like if you say, I don't want people to suffer, I don't want people to live in poverty, I don't want people to get sex trafficked. That's kind of beside the point for for Bank of America or Goldman Sachs. Right.
So is is there is there a concern that when we open up our these institutions of power to people who have in groups that have been marginalized, that they're going to change everything. And we're not, we're going to stop destroying the world. Like, that's a real fear, isn't it? We're evolutionary creatures, we're constantly, like evolution is a process of change. My experience is that things don't change overnight.
The fear in some of the clients that I've worked with has been that I will come in and break things. My experience has been things have never been broken. They've only been enhanced. think consumers, my experience in the research shows that consumers are more conscious. We're already seeing it with Tesla. They're conscious about what brands. and their founders or the people behind them, what they stand for. And they will boycott. They will boycott brands and they will destroy brands.
have the power to do that. We've seen it with the Ambercomber and Finch. We've seen it with Victoria's Secret, which I think were both owned by the same person.
We've seen it with so many other brands that seek to... no longer exists because consciousness has evolved the human consciousness has evolved as so if Victoria's Secret is example I mean Victoria's Secret is still around I haven't quite checked the numbers from but from when I last checked it the revenue numbers were not not as high as what they were when Victoria's Secret were at their peak what they failed to do was to so what you know
First women were like, Victoria's Secret Angels, yay, we love sexy women in lingerie and women that looked like that. And then women evolved. I started asking questions of like, actually, are all women like this? Is this okay? Is that perhaps the hyper sexualization of women and what are the societal impacts of? women being perceived and portrayed as that, how does that impact women's sense of safety in the world? How does it impact women's sense of safety even within relationships?
And so forth. so women's, as women's consciousness evolved and was like, hang on. Cause in the, in the, in the late eighties, nineties, it was all about, you know, part of women's empowerment was like, you know, embrace your sexuality and feel sexy or whatever. And then women were like, hang on.
And so Victoria's Secret failed to progress with failed to listen to women and what their needs were and you can see that shift in women's consciousness and the evolution of that consciousness because as women sort of change you see this, you know, this big hooky curve going up in revenue and then straightaway dropping because they failed to listen. There were so many other things that were going on like a lot of sexism within the organization.
I think some of the female leaders within the brand, trying to speak up. And so what you have with them is a very different brand to the brand that they, but they used to have, they had to change the whole company, whether they'll continue to exist is a whole other conversation. But I think if they... founder and CEO also had Jeffrey Epstein as his money manager for 20 years, which is not a great look. yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that went in. So a whole bunch of things that went on.
yeah, in my experience, I have a lot of colleagues that do this work. have never seen a brand being broken by the work of DEI or putting more in air quotation marks diverse people in charge of these companies. What we have seen is a comp- lead opposite. So I don't have any data to prove that all I know is like the desktop data that I've done in terms of things that I've seen the research the articles that I've seen.
What I have seen is brands being broken when they don't have a core sense of diversity and inclusion within their brands. If we look at things. I'm thinking it's beyond brands and just capability. I think about, know, like I think I can get confused if I see, you know, a transgender spokesperson for Budweiser. I can think, they're a progressive brand when they have nothing to do with it. But let's say a company like Boeing, which was arguably one of the one of the greatest companies.
by capitalist standards in the world in terms of what they did and the quality of, like, a bunch of the same people kept their jobs, it was affirmative action for white people who are not that talented, and all of sudden, Boeing can't keep a jet in the air. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna plug in my laptop because it just said to me that the apologies, apologies for that, for moving the screen around.
You know, there was a lot of blame because it was an easy place to put the blame, you know, that there is no, there is no data around that, you know. It's so interesting because when it comes to diversity and inclusion, people will say, is the data? But when it comes to putting the blame on diversity and inclusion, all of a sudden data is forgotten about. So, I mean, I think that's all part of a bigger strategy around power and throwing as much.
into the media to create mass confusion through chaos. I think that particular situation was part of a much larger, a much larger strategy. But in my experience, Yeah, that is putting more diverse people into those roles. mean, my assumption would be, I haven't worked in the Air Force field, but my assumption would be having worked in other areas is that it is a very highly regulated space with a very, very heavy focus on safety.
So the problem isn't diversity, the problem is in the mechanics of the operation. and things like that. yeah, I mean... Yeah, my thing is where is the data? To back that up. So when you think about the work that you do and the work that needs to be done, where do you see it going in the next five, 10 years? Like, what? What what can we look forward to? I know there's you there's a lot of, you know, reactionary movements right now.
I'm I'm telling myself that they're the last dying gasp of an old world. I hope that's true. know, would paint is paint is a picture of a world in which like stuff works. Yeah, I saw, I believe the future of DEI, mean, there's a big conversation amongst practitioners around what is the future of the work. My sort of sense is like, let's just sit with it for now. Let's not do like a big rebrand of the work and relabel it as some something else. Let's actually sit with it, sit with it for now.
I believe the future of this work is actually about empathy and us coming back to a sense of of humanness about what the work is about. We live in a very globally connected world. There is... I guess the sort of ideal future is a future where people genuinely look out for the needs and the interests of others rather than solely their own and have a service orientation.
So we're back after some Internet glitches, but I want to make sure before you go with it that you let people know how they can find you and your work and who should reach out for your service. Yeah, absolutely. can connect with me on LinkedIn, Winnitha Bonney, Instagram at winnitha.bonnie, and also my website is winnitha.com. So. and spell Winnitha for. Yeah, W-I-N-I-T-H-A dot com. That's probably the best place to find me, to send me a message and get in contact.
Right now I'm really focusing on spreading the message via events and speaking at different corporate events and conferences. One of the keynotes that I have is called, Ain't Woke. commercially smart inclusion. And that's really about resetting the agenda on the work and what it looks like for organizations and how inclusion truly is a win-win strategy for all kinds of organizations and businesses. Awesome, and do you do this work globally? Yeah, absolutely.
Awesome, so maybe someone listening to this can get you to Spain and we could meet up and have tapas. Yeah, that would be amazing. I think it's cool that your website is your first name. That's like making you like, you know, share or Madonna. Like you own the brand. Yeah, I gotta thank my mother for that one, huh? Winitha Bonney, thank you so much for this really heartfelt and thought-provoking conversation and for all the work you do in the world. Amazing. Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it. All right, take care, have fun. And that's a wrap. Show notes for today's episode at PlantYourself.com slash 621. What's going on? Movement News haven't done much. a weekend off just exploring the old city of Gerona. So did a lot of walking, but not much exertion. Coming back to the beach this morning after a podcast interview that I'm going to run, going to do some sprinting.
My trainer Jay is now throwing a football ahead of me and I try to run in the sand and catch up to it. I get about one in five or six, but apparently it's building good stamina. And we got the weekend grass tournament up north, north of Gerona this coming weekend. So excited to be back in cleats on grass. And that's about it for movement. Just just trying to keep things. calm and steady. Other things going on. The weather is getting real nice here. The trees are budding.
There's been a lot of rain in Spain this this past year. It's helped with the drought and things are looking forward to a greener spring and early summer than I've seen so far. Hey, a thought. It's beautiful area where I live and if folks would be interested in a three or four day retreat around mindset, around living your best life, removing the things that have triggered us so that we can move through life with more composure, become less flappable, more unflappable.
Anyone's interested in that and coming out to the Barcelona area, staying in a nice place, getting some nature and doing some group work on ourselves. Hit me up at PlantYourself.com. I'm not committed to this, but if there's interest, I'd be happy to start putting things together. I used to do this quite a lot when I still lived in North Carolina.
We would have these sick to fit retreats where people would come, maybe six to ten people, and we would do really amazing, deep work, eat great food, go running, go walking, connect, make lifelong friends and I hadn't I hadn't thought about doing that over here, but now I'm thinking about it. So H.J. at Plant Yourself dot com. H.J. stands for Howie Jacobson. H.J. at Plant Yourself dot com. Drop me a line. Let me know what you think. All right. That's it for this week.
As always, be well, my friends.