Good morning, keeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with Meet your Girl. Daniel Moody recording from the home Bunker. Folks, I can't express to you how fucking done I am.
Like it is one of those weeks where at just Tuesday, but let me be honest with you, I was done at probably noon on Monday, when Donald Trump once again skirts the law, gets a get out of jail free card with the lowering of the bond that he has to pay in the Tiss James fraud case fraud as it pertains to his real estate from four hundred and fifty four million to one hundred and seventy five million. There is no one that skirts the law, that finds
the loopholes that is enabled than Donald Trump. And what I will say is what everyone has been saying on social media, is that like, I'm over it, I'm not following anymore. Do you know what I'm saying? Because these cases are never going to come to fruition. Donald Trump has been able to do this dirty dealing for the last what forty fifty years of his life, no accountability, no nothing. He is rich, he is white, and he
is powerful, and every single system bows to him. And you know, for anyone who wants to say, well, oh, this is customary in these types of cases, do you know what's not customary? Donald Trump? Do you know what is not the norm? Having a fascist, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, confirmed guilty of sexual assault person running for president of the United States having a fifty to fifty chance of
becoming president. And at this point there isn't a system that you an agency that you can point to that is not working in lockstep with Donald Trump. So whether it is just recently Roni McDaniel leaving the RNC as their head liar in chief and being able to be welcomed with open arms into mainstream media with a contract where three hundred thousand dollars with NBC, Like, it's just I'm fucking over it because I sit around, I spit facts,
I yell, I'm indignant, and nothing ever changes. And so at what point do we all just decide, you know what, fuck it? You want to take this country back, take it, you want to run it into the ground, run it. You want to give tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires, great, you want to get rid of social safety nets, wonderful. You wanna you know, lock LGBTQ people up in an open air camp. Great, you want to kill all black people?
Okay?
You know, at what point do we just say fuck it and move on and get out because the constant battle to win nothing on our side. Ever, I'm exhausted, and today is yet another one of those days where I'm just like, I'm exhausted. I'm over it, And you're not gonna spin this into something being good or this is just normal, because you see, systems need to change in order to match the people that they are dealing with.
I wish that Donald Trump was treated by the justice system the way that innocent black people are treated like shit, right. I wish that there was, you know, no time for appeal, no nothing you can do that from jail, even if you are innocent. Everywhere, white supremacy and wealth reign supreme.
And I just am over it, you know, which is why in today's show, I took a break from just straight politics and had a conversation with a friend of mine, Malia Lazoo, who has a new book out entitled From Intention to Impact, a Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that came out earlier this year. Malia is an award winning tenured strategist and diversity and inclusion and a lecturer in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management Group at
MIT Sloan School of Management. She is former EVP and Regional President of Berkshire Bank and the creator of several accelerators designed to support minority owned businesses in the Boston area. The conversation with Malia, we get into it about the attacks on Dee and I, what it's like to do this work in this moment, and whether or not it will serve vibe Folks. I am very excited, super honored too.
And I don't know if this is the first time or it's just been a very long time, but let's say to longtime friend Malia Lazoo, welcome to OKF Daily. Malia is an award winning tenured strategist in diversity and inclusion and a lecturer in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management Group at MIT soul In School of Management. And she is Folks, the author of the new book From Intention to Impact, a Practical Guide to Diversity, Equity
and Inclusion. I could say that Wow, is this timely AF? This kind of book? Malia? Talk to us about the journey of the book, because I would argue that when you started, diversity, equity and inclusion wasn't under attack. We were in a place of expansion. How can company be better? How can schools be better? How can diversity, equity and inclusion be better integrated into our learnings and our dealings
in different industries and spaces. Fast forward, your book comes out and every other headline is about Dee and I C suite folks, leaders, teachers being fired, Let go investigated. Talk to us about this precarious moment and how your book fell in it.
Well, you know, you're so right in, Danielle.
It's so great to be on and to see you and hello, woke AF folks. I'm a woke AF folks. So it's fun to be on this side of the microphone. But you know, when I first started writing this book, we had rights to our body that we don't have now. Right, the attack wasn't as I mean, it was coming. It was inevitable, right, but it wasn't as vicious and as whole as it is now. And so you know, I feel like my book came at the right time to talk about the importance of D and I and how
you get there. So even if you have to call it something else, you still have to deconstruct the white supremacy within your company. And that's really what my book aims to do. I was laughing with mit President, the publisher. I said, could we have like picked a better year right to have this conversation? And traveling around the country, it's been interesting. You know. The people in Florida wanted to talk politics, right, the people in San Francisco wanted
to talk models, right. And we are in so many different places with this, but the one thing that has been steadfast is people are still really desperate to find ways to be interconnected with one another. You know, I think with the fascism and racism and sexism that's so overt, most.
People are actually saying, wait, no, that's not me, right.
I might not want my daughter to marry one, right, but this is all too much. And so you know, this book and these conversations have really given me a chance to intervene right with some people who think, oh, we may have to give it up, to be like, no, you just have to do this, right, You just have to get curious.
You just have to get empathetic, you know.
And I think that that is that's a really important thing to state and say. And I'm really grateful for the fact that you are the one who is offering up the ways that we need to maneuver and be nimble in this moment, because I think that that is what this political climate requires, is a level of nimbleness, imagination, and curiosity that is not linear. Right. And so in your book you outline what you refer to as seven
stages from intention to impact. Can you walk us through what those are and how you developed the seven stages and why? Because I talk about you know, we can both understand that people need steps and also understand that the work is not linear. So I want you to have an opportunity to speak to both of that.
Yes, and that's why I did these seven stages right, because I didn't want them to be steps, right. I wanted to then be stages because at the end of the day, you can go from one to seven.
You don't have to.
Do two, three, four, five, six if you just want to work on equity, right, And so you know, these steps were deed and stages were developed watching and working with companies and seeing what it actually took to go from an intention to an outcome, to an impact, to a higher to a policy change, right to a higher.
Ring, whatever whatever that goal might be.
And you know, you see these themes and a lot of companies stay in the first three four stages right in the first three stages are the honeymoon phase, right that you realize, you know, first stage, you can do something about the problem.
We can sign a pledge, right, we can make a donation. Yeah, right, look at us.
Go, so we sign that pledge. Well, now we have to do trainings, right, because we're going to make this work. We're excited. So now we start doing trainings.
Right.
Then we decide we can take action on low hanging fruit. We're making a higher we should make that person diverse, right, And then you start taking action on low hanging fruit. And that's when you start seeing substantial pushback, right. And stage four is what I like to call devil's advocate, right, like this idea that I'm pushing back, but it's for the good of the company. It's not you know, it's
not bad. It's not because I disagree with equity. I just don't know if we can get this through compliance, all right, And five is so you get it, you know, you answer compliance questions, but they're still pushback, right, like, oh, well, you know, I'm not sure if this is a real cultural fit, right, I'm not sure if we have the
time right. And at that stage is when you have to start wondering is this pushback legitimate, right, and you start seeing it might not be right, this might this actually might be all deliberate speed right, this actually might be.
Slowing down of the process. And stage six is naming it and.
Saying, I think that this pushback is actually racist, bias, sexist, whatever it might be. And I think there's no problem with hanging a sign on a bathroom that says everybody.
I don't actually think we have to go through compliance. I don't.
I think I just have to buy a sign, and I think I just have to put it on the bathroom and then everyone will know they're welcome in this bathroom. Right, you have to actually name and then get to stage Sepman, which is you just buy the sign, right, you just make the higher you you know, you just decide that you're going to act with integrity, and that's when you can actually have impact. But often most businesses do one
through for they get the pushback. They don't want to go through the pushback, so they wait until four years later, there's another George Floyd, they make another commitment. There's another Pulse Nightclub, they make another commitment, right, And and that's how the cycle of equity for a lot of companies and corporations are. And so I wanted to be able to say these stages so that people could see what they were getting.
Hung up on.
And I also wanted to delegitimize the pushback because what I have found with these companies is the pushback oftentime is culture not legal. We make it legal right because we you know, we don't actually want to push it back right. We don't actually want to maybe get an outside council to look at it right. We don't want to do those extra steps. So it's just easier to cover your ass and just you know, wait till you have to go to stage one again and just let things down in stage four.
You know, I think too, where the struggle comes is honestly that nobody wants to struggle, right, Because what I realize about getting woke about reaching a level of consciousness is that that requires work. Right, it is much easier to just hire within my network of people who look like me, pray like me, you know, love like me, and so on and so forth. Right, and the easier that things can be made, that is always going to
be the default that corporations, organizations revert to. So now basically where we are politically is that the Supreme Court has made it easier once again to discriminate. Right, they have said, oh, you know, all that work you've been doing over the last forty somemighty years, fuck it. You know, you don't really need to to do it, so just you know, wash your hands of the whole thing. And as a matter of fact, if you even have the word dee n I together, right, we're coming after you.
This is the plan of the right wing.
Right.
So, whether it's a black woman's VC company, right, knowing that black women get zero point one percent of VC funding, so they come up with a fund that can fund black women entrepreneurs, and now they're being sued by white supremacists for being racist. The cat is out of the bag. So if now it's been now legalized, discrimination is back in vogue. How do you even begin to incentivize people who were already lazy to begin with in their work around consciousness.
That's exactly right, Danielle. And you know the worst part about everything you said, besides it being true, all right, is that the Supreme Court case was only about education.
Right, And we were so we meaning.
The US, not we as an individuals, but as a country, we were so ready to cast this into the garbage right that we didn't even need to work through the nuance because the right was ready, you know, the I mean the left, we're reeling off a book ba right off of the fifty ways they're doing this right now. And companies, as you said, a lot of them don't want this smooth, right. A lot of them feel as
straight white men, am I becoming irrelevant? But this is where you know, I think it's important for us to sit in facts, science, and even their own data, right, because at the end of the day, when we're talking about DEI, we're talking about the way I like to call it is it's civil rights for corporations, all right, Like that's basically.
What DEI is, and what people are understanding is that it's not about it's nice to do it's about it's profitable, right, And in business, none of us show up to business to not get paid, right, So I don't need people in business to like me to whatever.
Right. I need to bring in my value and I need to get a return on that value that I bring into a company. And what we know is that diverse teams are thirty four percent more profitable.
Right.
What we know is that women led teams get twenty one percent more patents in Silicon Valley. And what we also know and smart CEOs know this, right. And I'm not just saying the ones who hire me, but there are other ones I talk about in this book. What they know is that right now, politics, employees and consumers
are very different groups of people. And if you're going to say that, well, our country is fifty to fifty because you're looking at voting, what you're not understanding And you and I know this, and you know a lot of your listeners know this. Right. We're talking about half of the half of a half of the American population, yep. Right. If you're running a company, you care about who can
buy and who can work. Yet it's a very different demographic then who goes out and votes on the first Tuesday of November, and I think the smarter companies and what we're going to see just like the smarter states. Right, what we see is, you know, countries and states that are more progressive have higher GDPs. Right, this is a
UN study, Right. What we're going to see is these companies aren't going to be able to keep up and they're not going to be able to compete in a global economy where a majority of a country is brown and non English speaking unless they actually have people who don't only come to work black, but be at work black and bring that. You know, they don't only come to work bround, but they be brown when they're at work. That's how you're going to get the products, services, and
top notch talent to maintain. You know, a competitive edge technology. AI is not going to save you the people who help you know how to use AI so that you can sell something there. You're cutting edge there, your competitive advantage.
You know. I want to go down what I often do here and forgive me a dark path for a moment, which is that I'm not so sure that the right wing I'm just staying on politics for a minute, actually give a damn about anyone being profitable outside of their donors. And I wonder if what is appealing to us as both consumers and workers, which is to be in a place of diversity, equity and inclusion, right, Like what do they say about gen Z right and you know the numbers that.
You know they take a pay cut, they'll.
Take a pay cut to work and a place that is mission aligned, right that they will they'll make less because they already know they're not buying the house like their like their parents did, because they can't afford it, right, So their their values are very different than what gen X, the boomers and up you know, were I wonder, however, with the policy decisions that we're seeing rolled out in these red right wing states and the attacks that we're seeing,
if they are still all about money even though that they're white supremact Like, it doesn't make sense. So help me make it make sense. Because what I have been talking about here on this show and others is America is about to experience a brain drain, that's right. And I want you to be able to talk about hip us to why this doesn't seem to necessarily register with the people who are on the attack, who require workers in order to make the wealth that allows them to fly high.
Well, that's exactly right.
Right. So I have a section in my book that asked the question, are we greedy or are we racist?
Right? Because we're told as capital isn't in both the d right.
Because we're told right, Well, the thing about capitalism is just about greed. It's about the almighty dollar, right, da da da da da. Well, if that's the case, then you should want women led teams. Right. If that's the case, If it is just about your greed, because that's what you do.
You don't worry about race, sex or whatever.
Men, you should start worrying about race or sex because that actually helps your greed.
Right now, is greed good? We can have that conversation on another time. Right.
But what we're seeing right is this break with the right and business. Right, Bob Iger never thought in a million years that he was going to have the governor of Florida come for him.
Right, he bought that man.
Probably right, I'm sure we could go back and look at the checks and right. These are politicians that had already been bought and sold, and now they're pushing back on things that are bad for business. Disney can't become homophobic. Bob Iger knows that, right. And what Bob Bieger also knows is that Ron DeSantis can't afford to build a jail next to the most magical spot on Earth.
Right. And so folks CEOs.
Like Bob Iger right, who are who are getting attacked. The ones who come out most successfully are the ones who are standing up.
To those right wing politicians. Right.
You know, you look at Budweiser, right, they decided to capitulate, and what happened They got all of us mad. Right. At first you just had the homophobe was mad, but then you decided to capitulate, So then we all had to get mad at you and backup Dylan right, and again this separation. You know a lot of CEOs that I know, yeah, they're you know, they like to say they're fiscally conservative, right, they're not fascist, right, and they
don't want to be. They don't want their daughters out or sons asking them why they're fascist.
And those are the CEOs.
That are going to succeed, right, Those are the CEOs that are going to keep running their companies. And so, you know, your point is such an important one because we remember in the civil rights movement, right, rather than integrating, they burnt down.
The place, yep.
And that's what they're doing with the country now, right, Yah got elected and they're like burned down the whole thing. But I don't know if everyone's going to let them do that, right, And I don't know if business is going to business has a lot invested in America as a country.
And I don't know if they're going to.
Allow our economy to become a pivotal economy, to become a regional economy like Russia. Right.
You know, they're already calling us a pivotal power.
Right. Businesses don't like that, right, And so now finding that journey is going to be hard because they're not well practiced.
Right, What do they know of liberation?
Right?
They don't right, right, But what they know is.
That there's more Spanish and French speaking people in this world than there are straight white men, and that those people need to wear sneakers and need you know, and are making choices about what dis showed to buy, right, And and so that struggle is real.
You know.
One of the examples that I talk about in my book, and actually, Danielle, you and I I think we're working, you know, working together. At the time was all these business folks started responding for George Floyd like we have never seen that, right, Oscar Grant, Michael bron Like.
It was a state civic people.
Conversation, right, and businesses sort of just minded their business. But when George Floyd happened, we had no government support, right. There was like I mean even Reagan came out during Rodney King, right, but instead we had a president who came out and both sided the issue. And business understood at that point that they had to be the adult
in the room, right, that they were the power. So now you have Jamie Diamond taking a knee, putting his fists up in the air, right, and then three weeks later he's going to tell his shareholders to vote against the Civil rights on it.
Right.
But they knew at that moment that they had to stop the burning, and they would have preferred government to do it, but government wasn't doing it. But they couldn't have natives be restless. And I think that are that's what we have to That's an opening for us. It's an opportunity because whether they believe it or not, from the minute they decided we were chattel, we were inextrictedly linked to their economy.
Let me ask you this last question because I think that we're in a in a quandary, right, We're in a we're in a moment, right. And you you have work shoulder to shoulder with civil rights leaders, you have built movements and social accelerators, and now you are, you know, looking at the future, looking at the present space that D and I is in, but also looking to the future. So tell us, in your view, right, what does the future of D and I look like? You know, can
you paint a picture for us? And not only what does it look like, but what does it feel like? Because right now it does not feel good or possible.
That's right, that's right.
And you know I think so DEI for me is inevitable, right. And the reason why I say that is because that's just how how we're making babies right now, all right, It's how we're achieving as black women right now.
Right.
If you you know, if you want to only hire people with college degrees, we'll guess what the most educated demographic are black women. So you're going to have to hire us, right, And does that mean that America makes it through right that those are our larger you know, conversations. But as far as DEI, women aren't going anywhere in the workplace, Black people aren't going anywhere in the workplace.
You know, we are going to we may call it something different.
Right. When I started this work, it was called affirmative action, right, and then it was called diversity, and then it was called diversity inclusion, and now it's de I b A blah blah blah.
Right, the same journey as LGBTQ.
Right, we become more and more precise right about, right.
About what we mean. And that's important.
And you know, we may have to call it wink wink, nudge, nudge, right, but whatever we're going to call it, we're gonna call it that. And we're going to continue to fight for our value to be seen in this in this country that we build. You know, I want to say, you know, to your point about the brain drain, I want us to lean into that.
Right.
I want part of d E and I to be us being you know, h a privileged diaspora. How we go out and help other diasporas humbly, right and with humility in finding our own liberation through leaving right. But you know, Marcus Garvey wasn't able to sell out. Neither
was Harriet Tubman. So I don't know if that's a realistic journey for us as a people, but I do think it's a realistic journey for us as individuals, and we should think about that, you know, I don't I don't think we need to use our resiliency for Jim pro fascism, come on, right, So you know, I I don't want us, you know, us to have to mammy this country to.
You know, back to health.
But I do think that this country will inevitably be brown, will be more Spanish, right, be more Asian, and will
be more progressive. And whether it does that with or without the government, you know, we have many examples, right, whether that's Russia or you know, South Africa, right, we have examples of countries deciding to change and not to change, right, And that really is going, you know, is going to be up to these young people, which is really what I'm happy for, because God knows they have a better grasp on liberation than anything we're putting forth right.
Now, Lord Jesus, Well, my friend Malia Lazou, let me tell you something. It has been far too long since we've been in conversation. I'm always grateful for you, but I'm very grateful for this book, this work, this conversation that you are having, Folks. It is from intention to impact, a practical guide to diversity, equity and inclusion. And if you were looking for a way, if you were in this field, if you're in any field and you're looking for a way to navigate this moment, this is the
book for you, Malia. Thank you, and I hope that it will not be years until you join us again.
Thank you.
That is it for me today, Dear friends, on wokef as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.