The Transformative Power of Empathy with Vincent Johnson

Join us as we sit down with Vincent Johnson, as he recounts his  trajectory from being a 'third culture kid' to becoming the Director of Equity and Inclusive Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Growing up as the child of a serviceman who was stationed in Okinawa and Taiwan, as well as Washington, DC, Vincent's immersion in different cultures before attending Harvard University shaped his outlook and his approach to his work as a consultant and board member with VISIONS.

Vincent recounts the major milestones in his life, including how an afro sparked a memorable Harvard application essay and the ways in which his varied experiences shaped his commitment to creating inclusive spaces at the law school. His story is not just one of personal success; it's a model for how learning to embrace our differences can lead to a more empathetic and just society.

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About us
Into Liberation: A podcast about transformative change, equity, and liberation is a production of VISIONS, Inc, a non-profit that offers effective tools that help individuals and organizations communicate and forge connections across differences that drive collective success.

Since 1984, we’ve offered research-based, time-tested approaches to cross-cultural learning that invite participants to engage in equity and inclusion work, starting at the personal and interpersonal levels and expanding to include changes toward institutional and cultural levels.

Whether it’s a book club, around the family dinner table, a school board meeting, or within your company, VISIONS offers actionable approaches that empower people to identify actions, explore their motivations, and effectively move through sometimes complex situations with respect and humanity for others and their differences.

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Music credit: Tim Hall @tv_hall

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Transcript

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 0:01

Hello, you're listening to Into Liberation, a podcast about transformative change, equity and working against oppression. I'm Leena Akhtar, director of Programs with Visions Inc. Welcome. It is my pleasure today to bring you another in our series of elder stories, this time with longtime Visions consultant, former staff member and current board member, Vincent Johnson. Vincent and I talk about how he grew up in several places as the child of a serviceman and how this shaped his outlook, and about being the first in his family to go to college and getting into Harvard and how he ended up in the Visions orbit. He currently serves as the Director of Equity and Inclusive Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 0:47

One of the things I appreciate most about doing these interviews is that I learn new things about people who I've been in community with for years. Vincent and I discovered that we'd both done a lot of growing up abroad, albeit in very different places. It was a pleasure to talk to him about how having that experience as a third culture kid during his formative years influenced his trajectory and how he shows up in the work much as it did with me. Hi, everyone, welcome. I'm really excited to be here with Vincent Johnson, one of our Vision's elders. You've been a consultant, you've been a staff member. You're currently a board member. Thank you so much for talking to us today.

Vincent Johnson: 1:26

Glad to be here, Leena, absolutely.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 1:29

Vincent, will you introduce yourself to people who are listening, who may not know you?

Vincent Johnson: 1:33

Sure, I'm Vincent Johnson my pronouns are he, him, his. Coming to you from the land that used to be inhabited by the Adina and Monongahela people, it's now commonly called Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and I work in terms of full-time work at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in the role of Director of Equity and Inclusive Excellence. In addition, I'm doing my part-time consulting with Visions Incorporated.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 2:05

Beautiful, thank you. So we talked a little bit before we did this recording, and you didn't grow up in Pittsburgh.

Vincent Johnson: 2:15

That is correct. I had what I consider to be a really interesting kind of growing up experience. Both of my parents are from Mississippi and in fact they were born and raised in Tallahatchie County where Emmett Till was killed, and it was pretty common knowledge among both of my parents' siblings, my aunts and uncles around who did it, who did the heinous crime, and it was no big secret. I actually am the son of someone who was in the US Armed Services. My dad worked for the US Air Force in the Office of Special Investigations and we did a little bit of moving around investigations and we did a little bit of moving around. My mom was a housewife until I went to college, so I knew her as the kind of traditional wife and mother from the like 1960s kind of classic family makeup. I was born in Topeka, kansas, and my father was stationed at Forbes Air Force Base and then we moved to Omaha, nebraska, where I was until I was six years old. In fact I have a vivid memory when I was six John F Kennedy was killed and I can remember the teachers being really upset around what was going on and adults were crying and it was a real jolt just having that kind of consciousness in my mind. And then, when I turned seven, our family had the opportunity to be with my dad in what we called an overseas assignment in Okinawa, which is now a part of Japan. So we lived in Kadena, okinawa, from 64 to 66. So I was like seven to nine years old and those were very formative years for me. I was in the second and third grades and what I can remember is that my school experience there was really diverse. There were lots of Asian students in the class because the children of ambassadors, children of foreign service people who were local to Okinawa, were at the school. Air Force, army, navy, marine kids, we were at the school. And then there were civilians whose corporations had their families there. Their kids were at the school. And so what I thought was really great that my dad did, instead of living on base we lived in the community of Kadena. So we lived among local Japanese people and I could just remember the kind of integration and being around a lot of Japanese people and seeing the difference between me and those who were, you know, local to Okinawa.

Vincent Johnson: 5:24

And then we moved back, or moved to for the first time, washington DC in 1966. I was nine years old and we stayed there for a few years until 1971, when we had another opportunity to be in Asia. My dad got an assignment in Taiwan, so we lived in a suburb of Taipei called Tianmu and again my dad made the similar decision to live among the Chinese in Taipei, taiwan. And so I went to Taipei American School for my freshman and sophomore years of high school and again, similar makeup of the student body population and then came back to the DC public schools where it was pretty much an all Black experience. So when I was in DC we lived in Southeast DC it's pretty much a poor working class environment and the schools were pretty much all black. So what I can fondly hold on to is that I had really great nurturing teachers that really pushed me who were black and the you know student body were students from the neighborhood.

Vincent Johnson: 6:44

And again, it was an interesting time to grow up as a nerd. People really referred to me as a nerd. I was a voracious reader, really good at school, made good school grades, and as I reflect on how I was treated back then, I'm really intrigued that I wasn't really bullied, you know, people just said that that guy is, you know, a real bookworm. In fact I earned the nickname of Peabody from the Sherman and Peabody part of the Bullwinkle cartoon.

Vincent Johnson: 7:17

If you've ever seen the Bullwinkle franchise there's a little dog named Peabody and because I've always worn glasses, they gave me the nickname Peabody to denote my nerdiness. So I embraced that and it kept me from, I think, being picked on. I just went with it. I remembered some high school reunions where somebody came up to me and said oh, I remembered that you let me look at your paper and I got good answers and good grades as a part of that. So I'd say all that to say that I was exposed to difference early on. I was raised in a really kind of Southern heritage household and my growing up experience was anchored by living in working class Southeast Washington DC.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 8:13

So when we talked before we did this recording, that was the first time I knew that you had had that international third culture kid experience. Sure enough, and that's very similar to how I grew up. My father wasn't military and I did grow up mostly attending international schools, american schools, in these kinds of surprisingly diverse so-called expat communities. Seven to nine in well, okay. So first, the first movie that you remember was that to Nebraska.

Vincent Johnson: 8:47

I remember bits and pieces of Nebraska and again it's anchored in that strong remembrance of when Kennedy was killed, because those were really upset and I knew something was wrong and it was funny. The other thing I remember about Omaha is that we lived in the projects. So I remember living in, you know, federal housing projects, as they are called today.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 9:10

What do you recall about that? Like I'm just curious, I mean, I know that sounds very that age.

Vincent Johnson: 9:15

Kind of we've. We lived in a string of connected units and there were entryways and there were entryways. Not I remember our address, and my address was 2959 Burdette Street in Omaha.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 9:55

Nebraska. It's funny the things that that one remembers yeah right, I was probably taught to remember my address.

Vincent Johnson: 10:02

it's still emblazoned here today.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 10:04

Yeah, you know, as you were speaking, it brought to mind one of the cultural learning questions that we ask sometimes when we do our trainings, and that is when did you first become aware that your upbringing was different than other people's, and how? So when you were talking about living in Okinawa among, you know, local folks, I'm curious to know what that experience was like for you. You said seven to nine, right.

Vincent Johnson: 10:32

Yeah, I was seven to nine years old, so that was second and third grade I spent over there.

Vincent Johnson: 10:39

Yeah, I just remember hearing different languages, being curious about the different characteristics of how people looked. As a Black person in my class, I was the only Black boy in both classes and there was one Black girl in the second and third grade and the two girls were different, so it wasn't the same girl and there were a lot of Asian students in both of the pictures and a lot of white students, both of the pictures and a lot of white students. And so I say that to say I remembered both the feeling of being a pretty big minority over there and then when going to DC, certainly a richness of an all black environment there. So it was quite a contrast.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 11:41

Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. And then I'm asking this because, you may know, I grew up in Riyadh in the 80s and that was during a time when the Gulf region was pulling in people from I mean, they were pulling their skilled labor basically from all over the world. And so I had the experience of growing up in an environment with the children of people who were intrepid and ambitious enough to come and live in Saudi, of all places, before they progressively reformed by their standards in the last 10, 15 years, and that really gave me a particular lens on what is possible, including what is possible in our work, right, because the kids had not absorbed the prejudices and preconceived notions of their parents. And so we grew up together and we got along in ways that I mean I noticed that our parents like filtered out by and hung out with, you know, people who were very similar to them. So I'm curious what you observed, either in China and or in Japan, about that, and then also like how that contrasted or didn't with what you saw in DC.

Vincent Johnson: 12:57

Essentially, that's an interesting question for me. I know when I went to Taiwan I was there for my freshman and sophomore years of high school. So the year before we went to Taiwan I was an eighth grader in junior high in DC and again I was pretty much held up by my peers as a smart kid, someone who was going places. I was really involved in a lot of club activities and organizations at my junior high school and when I got to Taiwan I can remember, especially by looking at yearbooks, that I was voted class friendliest my freshman year. You know how they had the superlatives for each of the years. So I've always been, I think, pretty extroverted and I think I attribute being extroverted to those immersions in different environments and my curiosity about the immersion and I will give myself a stroke around being able to be voted sophomore class president. So after being there for the freshman year, I was class president for the sophomore year and, again looking at yearbooks, I was involved in a lot of activities and I think, was able to forge relationships, mix and mingle, kind of go and integrate with different groups of students.

Vincent Johnson: 14:28

I found that I was really good at cross-country when I was at Taipei American School in Taiwan and I was actually one of the best runners. I was really pencil thin, if you can believe this. I weighed like 120 pounds. So I was like Forrest Gump. I could run effortlessly and run for a long way, ran a couple of marathons and so I was a triple threat in Taiwan. I was good in the books, class leader and also good in cross country and track. So I kind of developed some other skills while I was over there and that did me well when I came back to Southeast DC for my junior and senior years and it really helped me to round out my skills and talents such that I could be accepted into Harvard.

Vincent Johnson: 15:22

I clearly believe I was a beneficiary of affirmative action.

Vincent Johnson: 15:27

I'm the first person to go to college in my family and I was fortunate enough to be invited to matriculate into the Harvard class of 1979.

Vincent Johnson: 15:37

And having, I think, an independent school experience and teachings helped me to really do well on the SAT. So I scored really well in terms of SAT. My grades were stellar both in the Taipei American School and in my high school in Southeast DC and I can imagine that that portfolio probably did look good to Harvard, in that I had demonstrated that I had successfully navigated an independent school experience as well as a public school experience and I can remember writing my essay to get into Harvard around how I was viewed by some Chinese people, chinese people in Taiwan Back then. I had a really big afro and I can remember being at the local bus stop waiting to take the bus, like into the shopping district, because we lived in Tianmu, a suburb of Taipei, and Chinese people would point at or laugh at or come over and actually touch my hair and so I had, I think, like a couple of page essay around what it was like to be the other in an Asian community and how that felt to me.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 16:57

Do you still have the essay and or photos from that period? I definitely have photos.

Vincent Johnson: 17:02

I don't have that essay, but I've got all kinds of photos for sure.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 17:07

That's interesting. I put in the chat a. I think I found Peabody.

Vincent Johnson: 17:45

Oh yeah, that's him. That was my nickname, Peabody.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 17:48

Yes, fantastic.

Vincent Johnson: 17:49

I love it, absolutely Love it so class of 79.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 17:56

So you started at Harvard in 75.

Vincent Johnson: 17:59

Correct and in fact going for my 45th college reunion in May, so about six weeks away from me, and I'm looking forward to that.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 18:10

Great, I'm very curious to hear how that experience was for you.

Vincent Johnson: 18:15

You know what? I was really overwhelmed at first. Again, I was really kind of surprised. I got in, even though I applied to like I think, nine schools and I got into eight. I didn't get into MIT, for some reason.

Vincent Johnson: 18:31

I applied to MIT and I was on the ITS academic team at my high school. I went to Ballou Senior High School in DC and our ITS academic teacher was what I would call, maybe today, a Teach for America teacher. She was fairly young. She was a white woman from Florida who was also first generation to go to college and she went to Princeton and she encouraged myself and the two other it's Academic team students to shoot for the stars. So the three of us applied to Harvard, yale, princeton, I added Dartmouth and I got into all those schools and she actually took us to the campuses Harvard, yale and Princeton.

Vincent Johnson: 19:16

And so when I got to Harvard, I knew this is where I wanted to be. I was really enamored with Cambridge and it just felt right. I could see myself there. Plus, back in 75, you know Harvard was the H-bomb. You say Harvard and it was highly valued. In fact, one of the things I recall is that when I got the big envelope, meaning that I was admitted into Harvard. It was one of the few times I've ever seen my mother cry. My mother cried when I got an arm and I said wow. So it was just a transformative experience. I immersed myself into the community and back then Black students pretty much hung together so I quickly learned who the Black community was, developed relationships, got to know people, enjoyed long dinner conversations at the Black table at dinner and also at lunch, and just kind of got into sharing of ideas hearing from others, of got into sharing of ideas hearing from others. And once I got comfortable that I could manage the schoolwork then I wasn't overwhelmed and I really looked forward into just enjoying the Harvard experience.

Vincent Johnson: 20:42

And my experience I pretty much, I would say, stuck with the Black community. It was pretty insular and it's funny because when I've gone back I've gone back for each of the milestone. Every five-year class reunions there's discovery of like the white community who was in parallel to us and to me and I do recall knowing some of the white students who were in the dorm that I was, in the house that I was in. Of course I remember people who were on my hallway, where the rooms were, but I didn't know a lot of white people who were my contemporaries and the feeling's mutual People. We get into these deep conversations every five years with I do with white students who were colleagues of mine and it's really interesting to kind of open the book on relationships that were never developed back then and are natural places of connection and conversation today.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 21:45

Interesting. So what did you concentrate in and which house were you in? Just out of curiosity.

Vincent Johnson: 21:51

I majored in economics and I lived in North House and what's interesting is that I met my now ex-wife we have been divorced for about five years and I met her at Harvard. She was the class ahead of me, so she was in the class of 1978. She lived in Mather House, which was the furthest house from North House, and she majored in biology. She was pre-med. So when people discovered that we were together, we were an item. They found it hard to believe because we were very different. She was very studious, she was really into the books, was very studious. She was really into the books, certainly wanted to be a physician.

Vincent Johnson: 22:39

I was more your party animal. I was like I was really a party animal. I was, you know, back then the give me the, in fact the Black students. Now, every five years we get together and we go on a boat ride around Boston Harbor that's called the Aqua Boogie Boat Ride in honor of Parliament, funkadelic, and so I would be at all the various house parties and I did my share of connecting with you know, all kinds of folks. She was not as social as I was.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 23:07

And you met while you were there.

Vincent Johnson: 23:08

We met while we were there. Yeah, we had a long distance relationship Once she graduated and she went to med school. She went to Penn State Med School and I joined Procter Gamble when I completed college. So I was in Cincinnati and so I would take visits over to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where Penn State was. And we actually got married a couple of weeks after she graduated from Penn State Med School and she did her residency in pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, yeah, and we were married for 36 years.

Vincent Johnson: 23:48

We were married a long time.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 23:49

Wow had three kids.

Vincent Johnson: 23:51

Now we have one granddaughter.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 23:53

How old?

Vincent Johnson: 23:54

The granddaughter is 21 months old. She'll be two years old in July of this year, so she's at a very engaging stage of her development and certainly I've spent a lot of time with her on FaceTime and I'm looking forward to spending time with her in person over the course of the summer, as well as my daughter and my son-in-law too.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 24:21

Beautiful yeah, that too.

Vincent Johnson: 24:24

Yes, I can't forget.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 24:26

Sweet, that's very sweet. So you were working for Procter Gamble and I understand that that's how you first encountered Visions.

Vincent Johnson: 24:33

Absolutely.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 24:33

Okay, how long into your trajectory with them?

Vincent Johnson: 24:37

So I joined Procter Gamble in 1979, and I connected with Visions in 1994. 1994. I was HR manager in customer services logistics and in 1994, I worked for Jaro Marinovich and he was a friend of Visions. He passed away I think a couple of years ago now and Jaro had this vision of a diversity intervention for the customer services logistics global organization. It was a 700-person organization. Most of the people were located in the US and there were some people in some of the subsidiaries of Procter Gamble in Europe and South America.

Vincent Johnson: 25:30

So at that time we did a request for a proposal, visions was invited to provide a bid and I happened to read the red book from Harvard for a class. So back then it was our 15th class reunion and I had kind of fallen out of touch with one of our current consultants, joe Steele, and Joe, in his Redbook update to the class, said he was doing diversity work. So I asked Jaro, my supervisor at the time, whether we could add Joe Steele to this list as well. So to make a long story short, we made the decision to award the business for creating this and designing a training intervention to both Visions and Joe Steele, and so I will humbly take some credit for putting Joe Steele with Visions. I was able to be a factor in making that happen and it's been a great marriage ever since.

Vincent Johnson: 26:32

And the design was outstanding. It was based on the vision model, similar to the vision models today. There were facilitators who were probably some of the original visions facilitators. 700 customer services logistics employees were trained over a 14-month period and we did as much as we could in intact work groups so that real diversity issues could be done in process.

Vincent Johnson: 27:02

It was a vigorous intervention and ongoing natural settings for the customer services logistics organization and so we divided it up into like 10 different sessions, 70 employees per session and I, as the process owner for Procter Gamble, had an opportunity to help Visions kind of plan out the schedule who would be going through the sessions, assigning co-facilitators to each of the work groups and sitting in on those process meetings during the course of the two-day trainings that occurred throughout the arc of the workshop experience for the organization and with that I fell in love with Visions. It was magical to me to see the impact on work groups at Procter Gamble who really didn't work across difference very well, who had longstanding issues that were under the surface and never dealt with, as well as seeing how Visions itself made adjustments to the design or did kind of crowd sharing, problem solving If certain groups were getting stuck in the process. It was really magical.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 28:19

So many questions, so first 700 people. That is astonishing.

Vincent Johnson: 28:26

Yeah, Customer services logistics was a big division back then.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 28:31

So, having been so, you know you have this perspective, obviously this lived experience in a number of different places in the US, right. So Cincinnati, big, I would say, midwestern city, and also Pittsburgh, big Midwestern city, I would categorize that too. What was doing that kind of work in the mid-90s like?

Vincent Johnson: 28:54

Well, that was the time where there was still a lot of separation. Something about Cincinnati that's different than Pittsburgh is that Cincinnati borders on Kentucky, so it has a much more Southern feel than Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh would call itself more Eastern, but it is definitely Midwestern and, you know, there was still a lot of separation, black and white, and, much like Pittsburgh, pittsburgh. There wasn't a lot of Asian or Latino employees, both in Procter Gamble in Cincinnati and some of the other places where customer services had its office locations, so there was an opportunity to do some cross-cultural work there.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 29:47

Interesting. And then so afterwards like what was the change that you noticed after the two years of work?

Vincent Johnson: 29:54

Yeah, I think some of the biggest changes included the invitation to problem solve. People were much more open to hearing about what was not working. One of the big issues that P&G had to deal with was classism. There was a huge separation because Procter Gamble was very much built on a military model. There were a lot of ex-military people in the Procter Gamble leadership and so it was very hierarchical in nature and you know a lot of the what we would call administrative people who were not managers really didn't have much of a voice when they had so much knowledge that you know people weren't really allowed or really asked to bring to the business problem solving, and so I saw lines of communication opened that it seems like it would be common sense to have that amount of inclusion, but back then it just did not happen.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 30:58

Interesting, but back then it just did not happen. Interesting. I've lately started describing what we do as deep culture, change work, or at least my approach to it, my thinking about it. I think that there are a lot of things that are tangled up for people in the catchphrases that we use diversity, equity, inclusion, multiculturalism as we used to call it. So it's interesting to hear this, how it was an invitation to problem solve and really an interest in a way to be with one another differently Interesting. So, p&g, you were introduced to Visions and then this is one of my favorite questions like what led you to stick around, what keeps you coming back?

Vincent Johnson: 31:39

And yeah, you know again, I was really impressed with the impact the organization had during that 94 to 96 period and I left Procter Gamble in 2001. My ex-wife wanted to come back to Pittsburgh. Her parents were getting older so I took a separation package from Procter Gamble and I had maintained connection to visions from the end of that experience until when I left P&G and I was able to attain a role of I think they call it assistant director for communications and marketing. So I did communications and marketing for like a two-year period. The irony is that I joined Visions a month after I left Procter Gamble, in August of 2001. And I joined Visions on September 4th 2001.

Vincent Johnson: 32:42

9-11 happened the next week. The economy kind of tanked so I was supported in doing a remote version of the role. So I was still based in Cincinnati and I would go into Boston like once a month and be physically there. But everything else was remote and that was unsustainable for the organization to compensate me as a staff member and it just was not working. So I left Visions in early 2003 for more kind of traditional role back in private industry.

Vincent Johnson: 33:25

However, I was given the invitation to stay connected to the Visions community and in 2003, started my journey to becoming a part-time consultant through the ongoing supervision processes.

Vincent Johnson: 33:41

I did, I think, two, four days, was an apprentice to some of the senior consultants who were prevalent at the time and developed my adeptness at working with the model over time, and at that time they weren't necessarily doing flyovers, so I didn't fly over officially and I had these requirements that I had to demonstrate that I could manage the process as well as the content of the Visions model in groups of training sessions. And you know, to Visions credit, they allowed me to be a part-time consultant, remotely, really ever since I took on some roles and responsibilities because I worked for a healthcare purchasing organization and so I did some work with healthcare institutions before coming here to the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. I worked at PNC Bank and Supply Chain Management and so I did some work in some of the private industry consultations that Visions had because I could really speak the language of being a corporate employee and could represent that point of view, and so I've been really fortunate in that really since, like 2003, I've been a part-time consultant off and on.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 35:08

I think that's really one of the strengths of the organization, because we all come from such varied backgrounds from being clinicians to being in business, like you are, to being academia, like like I was and really being able to leverage that experience and how it interfaces with the model when we bring it into into organizational work is I don't know. I find that very satisfying because I can also have an impact on the kinds of environments that I mean. Frankly, I left for reasons you know. So, just to say for people who might not know the terms, the four day is now our personal approach to change an equity one workshop pace one and then fly over is our beautifully idiosyncratic term for graduating into being a full consultant. Term for graduating into being a full consultant. So, before we go further, I'm also curious.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 36:12

This approach is one of the few DEI approaches that resonated with me deeply as somebody who grew up mostly abroad, who understands and I mean obviously it was an evolving understanding, it took a while to come to understand the historical oppressions and the race dynamics and how I enter into it as a category of person who was allowed in the mid-60s really, and because our way of working, while being race forward, does take into account and work across different variables of oppression and can be adapted to different contexts. That's what really made me convinced about it, because I've seen the power of it. I've seen how powerful it has been for me personally, even as I do the work with organizations. So when you were exposed to the model, I'm curious what did you find most personally transformative?

Vincent Johnson: 37:00

There were a couple of things I'm curious what did you find most personally transformative? There were a couple of things, I think feelings as messengers, because I'm a very sensitive person, so feelings really resonated with me and I liked looking at what the messengers are in various parts of my life as well as working with people to kind of unlock that box. And it's interesting because I'm here in the law school and I teach a course called Exploring Cultural Identities Through Intergroup Dialogue where I utilize a lot of the visions tools in addition to intergroup dialogue tools that allow students to talk about hot topics. And the two biggest impacts for the students and they were impactful for me are the feelings as messengers and stroke theory, as well as modern racism, internalized oppression. So that package of three things I think really impacted me and I see in its current delineation with our law school students, I see that impacting them as well, because law school for many of the students is a very competitive experience and there isn't a lot of permission to be collegial and it may feel like an exposure to collaborate and certainly to discuss one's feelings in law school. For many students it's taboo, it's like the third rail. You don't want to do it. So I really am glad when students feel like they have a safe space where they can check in with regard to their feelings and they see over the 12 weeks that they're in the class how they really get so much closer with one another and how they have benefited from trying on feelings as messengers and almost to a student. They indicate that they want to keep that in their toolkit as attorneys.

Vincent Johnson: 39:08

Many of the students who take my course are more public interest attorneys. They want not to work for big law firms, they want to work for people and represent those who are underserved, and so they really understand the modern racism, internalized oppression piece having utility in that. And then law school can very much be a stroke deprived environment. So they basked in the stroke application and the stroke activity and I do it twice during the 12 weeks, once about week four and then at the very end. And it's always very powerful for those students to get the mutual strokes and for them to breathe and take in those strokes and to pick just one to share with the rest of the class and do a self-stroke. All of that is really impactful and so as I see the students go through the process like that it reinforces how I was really kind of hooked into this journey and how I'm really re-energized every time I'm in these law student classes and it helps me to reflect back on my beginnings at Procter Gamble with visions.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 40:27

Beautiful. The feelings as messengers unit portion of the curriculum resonated like that for me too. I had been so far away from anything even remotely resembling emotional literacy, both familiarly and culturally, that when I was first learning the model I would actually journal with the feeling wheel. So, yeah, so the the strokes unit. I've been calling it feedback, feedback and recognition. Feedback is an antidote to oppression because it is verbal and emotional feedback that people are giving each other.

Vincent Johnson: 41:03

Sure enough. You know now that you said that I've been in environments where strokes the connotation of strokes is a negative word. So, yeah, I get that. Yeah.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 41:14

And then, similarly, I have to. I remember when I first learned about modern oppression and internalized oppression, I was quite saturated by the time we got there and sleep deprived because it was long in-person days and that's a complicated thing, for me.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 41:29

And I remember, with the internalized oppression slash survival behavior material, I remember thinking like, nah, I don't do any of these things the first time I was exposed to it. And then, when I was training up, like remember thinking like, nah, I don't do any of these things the first time I was exposed to it. And then when I was training up, like you know, obviously we had multiple exposures and I remember we were doing some problem solving and I was talking through a situation and Terry Berman was like that's system beating, you know. And I was like I'm a system beater. And then that's when it clicked for me that these behaviors were so embedded in my way of being just where I grew up and how I grew up and where I live now and all of that that I thought they were my personality.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 42:14

Wow, these survival adaptations right. It was such a way of being, such a default way of being, because they were such deeply embedded survival behaviors. So that was a mind-blowing revelation for me and, similar to what you're saying, because it was so significant for me, I bring a certain energy to my teaching of it. So, Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Law School, I think it's really beautiful that you're teaching lawyers the language of feelings. I think my personal favorite is bringing that model into academic settings, especially STEM academic settings. I can see people eyeing the door when I say the F word and they come around to it because it is such a beautifully simple and true and useful model.

Vincent Johnson: 43:07

Absolutely.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 43:08

So you've been doing this work at UPIT Law School and then you're also on the Visions Board.

Vincent Johnson: 43:14

Yes, yeah, I joined the Visions Board back in 2018. And it was at the invitation of one of our consultants, Thomas Griggs, and it was at a time when there was a recent departure of kind of a failed executive director. So it was a very tender time for the organization at that period, for the organization at that period, and I really liked for myself that I could bring in the lens of having been a client, having been a staff member even though it was only for a couple of years and having been a part-time consultant as a board member and I was, I think, immediately voted to be like vice chair. So I immediately became I'm a heartbeat away from the chairpersonship of the board.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 44:05

So, over the course of your work as a consultant, as a staff member, as a board member, what have been some of your biggest lessons?

Vincent Johnson: 44:14

It's one of the mantras we have trust the process, no-transcript. All of our meetings, as well as our committee meetings, and in just the six years I've been on the board there's been a real cycle, a feast and famine with regard to the organization. Certainly after George Floyd, the floodgates you knowates opened and there were requests for visions and we were having so many inquiries and we really needed to respond in the moment to all the demands of people wanting to be better and do better. I have really been gratified by seeing the latest consultants coming into the organization who are breathing new energy younger ages, new ideas, different backgrounds and it's really heartening to see how that's informing, how vision shows up when we do our consultations. So I really have learned to trust the process.

Vincent Johnson: 45:42

I used to worry that when the elders aged out, you know, the light would dim. I'm not worried about that anymore. I think the light will remain bright, going forward because systems have been established that will keep itself and even in this time when there is a lot of anti-DEI language, there are some organizations that are doubling down on diversity and I think Visions is the right fit for those organizations and there's enough of them to keep us going. You know, I think we will push through this period of pushback and continue to keep on, keeping on.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 46:25

Beautiful. I appreciate you saying that you think that my cohort and the ones that have come in afterwards are going to keep the torch going. That's that that feels really good to hear. And also, that said, can I tell you, when I first trained, I'm like I am so glad that there are adults in the room, because sometimes, like yeah, because it can be intimidating the kinds of things that can potentially come up in these rooms, and I've learned so much by watching people who've done this for decades just how deftly you all are able to handle it Right. I've learned so much that I don't think I could have picked up in any other way. So thanks for that feedback. So I think my last ish question I'll ask them together and you can answer them however you like. So, speaking to cohorts like mine and the ones that are following, what is something that you want to teach? And then the other side of that is what do you hope to see in the world?

Vincent Johnson: 47:27

So what I hope to see in the world is that, on a worldwide basis, we don't give in to hate. I mean, there is so much divisiveness in many parts of the world it can be. It makes me sad to see that in 2024, we're still doing inhumane things and interactions and wars. That's so barbaric in my mind. So my wish is that we as a human race would get our act together and stop the fighting. Similarly, you know I'm very much anti-guns. Gun control to me. You know I wished there weren't more guns in this country than there are people, and you know that is an issue that, to me, is really preventing our nation from being the best that it can be.

Vincent Johnson: 48:26

What I want to teach?

Vincent Johnson: 48:27

That's a good question.

Vincent Johnson: 48:28

I feel like I'm really empathetic and if you're familiar with Myers-Briggs, I'm an ENFP extroverted intuitive perceptive feeling, enfp extroverted perceptive feeling, enfp extroverted intuitive feeling perception, and some people call that life of the party.

Vincent Johnson: 48:46

And so my hope is that people continue to connect and continue to problem solve and work through the what I would call the dysfunction that is occurring in this nation and globally to create a better world for our children and grandchildren and those coming after the grandchildren. My wish is that we can continue to forge ahead and eliminate the roadblocks that get in our way from being our better selves. And, you know, having this little influence where I can to use the visions model to encourage people to be open to different approaches and new ideas, to try on the model itself and all of our guidelines and ways of being in the world to me really helps to advance that cause and in some ways I think it can be done. You know, one person, one group, one organization, one company, one nation at a time and I think we've got to have the impact that you know overcomes all the negativity that's out there. So that's my wish.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 50:04

Beautiful. Thank you for that, and, vincent, thank you for the work that you do and for holding the organization in the various ways that you do.

Vincent Johnson: 50:13

It's life-giving to me, so I get more than I give. There's no doubt about that.

Dr. Leena Akhtar: 50:26

Coming up. Please look out for more elder stories in the lead up to our 40th anniversary celebration that's happening in late September 2024 in Boston. At that celebration, we'll be honoring the last 40 years of our history and where we've come from, as well as looking toward the future and to what kind of world we want to help bring about. Please join us if you can. If you're new to Visions and want to get a sense of some of the frameworks and tools that we've been talking about in this and other episodes of the podcast, I invite you to check out our Pay what you Can Guidelines for Effective Cross-Cultural Dialogue Workshop. It happens on the last Wednesday of every month at 4 pm Eastern Time and is 75 minutes long. Links to everything are in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, Until next time.