Episode 9 - Jayzen Patria

Jayzen Patria joins JSL’s Chief Diversity Officer, Vickie Hubbard, for the ninth episode of Not Your Average DEI Podcast! In this episode, Vickie and Jayzen take a deep dive into Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and what makes an ERG program successful.

Jayzen Patria is a personal branding expert, diversity advocate, and keynote speaker. He helps transform organizations through the power of their people finding their true brand voice and bringing their best authentic selves to work every day. 

Jayzen is a 25-year learning and development veteran of Fortune 100 companies, including General Electric, Comcast, and NBCUniversal, and he has worked with some of the world’s top entertainment, media and tech brands. At NBCUniversal, Jayzen led executive development and is noted as the architect of the Talent Lab, their uniquely branded corporate university.

Inspired by his multicultural background, he is a life-long equality advocate serving in roles to champion diversity, including leading global ERGs for fifteen years and creating development programs for female and other underrepresented employees.

Jayzen has been featured at international conferences, is the host of the popular Lead With Your Brand! podcast and is proud to serve on the American Red Cross’ National Diversity Advisory Council and the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Transcript

Speaker 1 - Vickie Hubbard
Speaker 2 - Jayzen Patria

Speaker 1 

Hello everyone, thank you for tuning in to another episode of JURISolutions Legal's Not Your Average DEI Podcast. My name is Vickie Hubbard. I am the Chief Diversity Officer of JURISolutions Legal and also a member of our DEI Committee, and my pronouns are she and her. 

And joining me today is Jayzen Patrea, and listeners, you are going to be so excited to have this experience with Jayzen. I actually met Jayzen this year at a NGLCC conference that took place in Las Vegas last month and he is sensational. For those of you not familiar with NGLCC, it is a national LGBT Chamber of Commerce, and he is an expert in ERG, Employee Resource Groups, and I invited him today for a fireside chat so that we can talk a bit about employee resource groups and to provide some best practice tips to our listeners. 

And so let us all welcome to our show Jayzen Patrea. He is a personal branding expert, diversity advocate, and host of the popular Lead With Your Brand podcast. His mission is to help organizations transform through the power of their people, finding their true brand voice and bringing their best authentic selves to work. So, hello Jayzen. Welcome to the show! 

Speaker 2 

Hey Vickie, how's it going? Hey everybody, it's Jayzen Patria here and my pronouns are he and him. 

Speaker 1 

So excited about having you on this show today. I promise you, you are just awesome and everyone that’s listening in, Jayzen was one of the key presenters at the NGLCC Conference, and I'm just so flattered that he agreed to be on our show. I think that there's so much for all of our listeners to gain from having you here, Jayzen. 

So before we jump into the why, which is a fireside chat with you to learn more about how ERGs can positively impact employee inclusion and retention and best practice tips for delivering ERG within law firms and corporations, I would love for our listeners to get to know a little bit about you personally. Are you okay with that? 

Speaker 2 

Oh yeah, so we're getting deep in Oprah here. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, let's do that first. We can show up and be our authentic selves. 

Speaker 2 

Exactly go ahead. 

Speaker 1 

OK, great, so I know that you live in the Los Angeles area and so do I. So, are you originally from Los Angeles? 

Speaker 2 

I am. I grew up in Pasadena, CA which is the original suburb of Los Angeles and of course, home to the Rose Parade, which I was a huge, and continue to be a huge fanatic of. So, I always think of myself as a showman, and it started with something that is quintessentially California and LA, which is let's decorate floats with flowers and take them down the street. 

Speaker 1 

I know and I love it. I love it. I've attended several since I've lived here. It's just always so much fun and I love Pasadena. Love, love, love Pasadena. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, and actually, you know, like the Pasadena Tournament of Roses is a great example of a DEI story and being really intentional because if we think back, you know 25 years ago it was still a volunteer organization that was for the most part exclusive because it was built by an organization called The Valley Hunt Club, right? 

Which was really a whites only club in Pasadena, but 25 years ago they really put intentionality into saying this organization is here to serve the community and it doesn't reflect the community and really doing that tough work to be the organization that it is today that really represents you know all of the great diversity of Los Angeles in the Southern California area. 

Speaker 1 

Absolutely, and Los Angeles is so vast, it’s huge and so that's what I love about living in the greater Los Angeles area because it's such a melting pot and, to your point, the Rose Parade is such a great example and a great expression of diversity. I love that. Oay, so do you happen to have a favorite quote or mantra that you live by? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, I mean I love a whole bunch of quotes, but I would probably say my biggest mantra is kind of like “go big or go home.” I feel like in my own life it's about dreaming big, thinking big, acting big, and that doesn't mean that you always get there, right? But I feel like if you have limited thinking about what it is that you want to do, you only can achieve that. 

If you think of stuff that's really big and huge like, you may only execute 50% of that, but that's still probably 200 times bigger than what it would be if you had like limited yourself at the bottom. Plus I'm also just a big proponent in terms of my own values. It's like, I don't say yes to something or I don't participate in something unless I'm really going to do it, right? 

Like I'm not here to like stand on the sidelines. And I'm not here to just kind of like add my name to something and not be a participant. You know, I want to be part of things where I'm going to do something meaningful and add value and that I'm going to gain something positive from the experience too. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, I love that. And the whole thing about “go big or go home” is, you know, managing your expectations along the way and celebrating your small wins along the way. It really does give you that extra fuel to keep going. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, and you know, I think so much of it has to do with DEI, right? I mean it's like when I am working with some of my clients, I'm always pushing them like, you got to do something bigger. Now we know that our journey is about incremental steps, but if we only like sign up to do something very small or the bare minimum, that's not changing the world, right? 

That's not making us a more equitable society that's just kind of like getting to the baseline right? So, I'm interested in working with people that do want to, you know, have these big hairy audacious goals and actually make a mark and do something so I know that I'm like not interested in working with people that want to check a box. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, absolutely. It really is a good segue to why we selected you as our guest today. Tell us a bit about your brand, you know, what it is that you do. I mentioned on the show that you are an expert and employee resource groups, but tell us more about that. What would you like for our listeners to know about your background as an employee, resource group expert and the role that you play in the DEI space? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, I would say I’m a personal branding expert, I'm a diversity advocate, and I'm a big podcaster. and I am celebrating the 5th anniversary of my firm which is exciting. And what I do is I really focus on helping companies drive workplace engagement by ensuring that their employees can find their true brand voice and be able to bring their best authentic selves to work every single day. 

Now, that shows up in a couple of ways. Many people know me for of the Lead With Your Brand podcast and I'm a big keynote speaker around, leading with your brand. To me, that's all about helping people find their true brand voice, and that's universal, right? At the end of the day, in your career and I would say in life, you don't want to be a boring old commodity like coffee. You want to be a super premium brand like Starbucks, right? You want to be someone that people line up for. 

And so, what I have done is taken all of these years working in Hollywood with amazing Chief Marketing Officers with amazing brands and really taken a brand marketer’s toolkit to help individuals and teams build an amazing brand. A brand that people want to be a part of. A brand that is authentic and not made-up, but a brand that feels differentiated from the rest.  

And now you're probably looking at me, Vicki, and you're going like, well, what does that have to do with diversity? Well, here's what we know about diversity. We know that people from marginalized communities, whether they're people of color, women, LGBTQ+, people in the disabilities communities, we sort of grow up in a system where people don't tell us the rules of business. 

Like there's all these unwritten rules, and one of those big elements is around your brand. And so many of my clients leverage my lead with your brand system to help underrepresented employees hear those rules and really be able to take control of their own brand. Because here's what we know is as, you know, a gay multiracial guy, if I don't like, lead with a brand, then I'm just like the gay guy in the office. 

Like that becomes my brand and I don't want my brand to be my identity, as I know nobody else wants their identity to translate into their brand, right? Now, it's who I am, It's an element of who I am, but it's not the value that I bring, right? And then when we look in the diversity space, I help a lot of companies behind the scenes really think about their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy and helping them upskill in those concepts. 

And then spend a lot of time helping companies either launch their employee resource groups or what we find is really how do we help ERGs revitalize after they've been around for a while? Because that work is also on a journey like the rest of the DEI journey is, and you can kind of hit a crossroads where it feels like we're just on a hamster wheel, or we've accomplished so much but like now, what do we do when we've implemented some of these great things? How do we keep the engagement and the value? 

Speaker 1 

Yes, and let's dig deeper as it relates to that. So, we hear of employee resource groups and we hear of business resource groups and there are affinity groups, right? Well, the first question is what would you say is the difference between the two and then the second part of that is which would you say is the most valuable to an organization? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, well, I think the important thing when we look at this whole space of like are we affinity? Are we business? Are we employee? Is we have to understand the history and if we think about the history and we understand that DE and I is not a destination, rather a journey, I think it helps people out, right? So if we look at affinity groups, you know most people are shocked, but the first affinity group dates back to 1964, right? 

We're talking over 50 years, almost 60 years now. Back with our friends over at Xerox. And so this is like coming right out of race riots that are happening. This is coming right out of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act and it was primarily their CEO and a group of black employees saying we're the only one in our department, I'm the only one at my worksite, which unfortunately people still feel that way today. 

So when we talk about the journey, we haven't solved for that, but those affinity networks were really about being self-forming. And they were about community, right? If you think in those old days, and I know some of our listeners remember this, this is like going through like the extension telephone directory and being able to know like who's somebody else like me that I can pick up and call the extension and say like “I'm experiencing this, have you experienced this? Help me out,” right? 

So when I think of affinity groups, that's really where they started, and their purpose is to help build community and help people connect with other people like them in an organization, right? If we think about in the 90s, that evolution, that's really where we started to see the evolution into employee resource groups, right? 

And when I look at an employee resource group it really helps move from self-forming to really being sponsored by Human Resources or back then, kind of these early diversity teams that some companies were just starting to have. We were pretty much D and I only back then, right? We weren't into equity, we weren't into belonging. Those were not words that we were really focused on back then. 

And when we looked at that, suddenly there was an internal focus which was around being an employer of choice, right? Which was helping navigate for employees. All of these great benefits packages that we had, and it's kind of the time that companies realized we can provide great benefits. But if employees don't take advantage of them, it doesn't matter. We can be spending out this money, and if we haven't bridged that gap. 

So it was about how does ERG help solve for the total compensation package there, but then externally it's really where we started saying, okay, how can we be an engine for recruitment? How can these ERGs partner with talent acquisition or hiring, whatever it was called at the time, to really say you're a member of this community. Help us find other top talent like yourselves to bring in. 

And so that was sort of that 90s iteration. Then what I say is kind of the past 15 years has really been this evolution to BRG or Business Resource Group, which I like to look at as again it's part of the journey. It doesn't mean that we're not about community. It doesn't mean that we're not about recruiting and being an employer of choice. It means that we're adding on a lens of, one, being more sponsored by the business, and so I think that's where we see executive champions coming in. 

This is where we see the senior leadership team being accountable and having a relationship with these groups. But then I think it's easy for us to see the external piece, which is how do we add on sort of this consumer-facing or B to B facing element to help drive revenue and market share through marketing or products or services, whatever those are. 

What I think we miss a lot in that is the internal thing is about moving from employer of choice to being a talent engine, right? It's about how do we contextualize the career life cycle for diverse and underrepresented employees and help propel them through? How do we align them to say hey, you know what? This is, what it looks like to be successful and Latinx at our firm, and here's the supports and the connections that are going to help you grow in the firm, right? 

Or here's what it looks like to be, you know, a veteran or a person that identifies as black and being able to see yourself and move up in the firm. And so, I think when we talk about which ones better, I think the Holy Grail is the business resource group. But I think the challenge is that people name themselves whatever they want, so I will tell you, you know I grew up in Hollywood, but I worked for Universal that was owned by seven different parent companies in the 25 years that I worked for them. 

One of those companies was General Electric. Well, you know, I know they're not a hugely relevant company now, but at the time they were like a fortune three company, right? Coming off the Jack Welch days and the early Jeff Immelt days. But they had, and still have, affinity groups that were doing ERG work way back in the 90s, right? They were using their ERGs, or what they called the affinity groups, they were using them to drive a whole host of business results, right? 

They were using them to move women and people of color all over the world in roles by having these gigantic annual conferences that were how they looked at top diverse talent and connected them to recruiters and business leaders. And they were hugely successful at moving people all over all the way to doing things like hey, when they were working and really growing in Asia, how were they leveraging their Asian Pacific Islander group to help with cultural competency to help expat people who had cultural competency that could go and be managers there that could help the company really work on the business side. 

Now remember they called themselves affinity groups. I go to a lot of conferences and meet a lot of people that are like hey, we have a BRG but when I look at what they do it's still kind of a lot of food, flags, and fun, which again, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's a lot a whole lot more. So, I always say measure yourself on what you're doing because you can call yourself anything. And I think a lot of people put a lot of effort into what they call their groups, and it's kind of like you know this is kind of the whole thing with branding you can call yourself whatever you want. At the end of the day, your brand is really the experience and the value you deliver. 

Speaker 1 

To your point and thank you for that, because that was awesome. How valuable did an Employee Resource Group or a Business Resource Group, how valuable would you say such groups are to moving the needle as it relates to a law firm or an organization’s DEI initiatives? 

Speaker 2 

So I think they can be hugely impactful. My caveat is, we can't fall into the trap that employee resource groups or employee groups are our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, right? Because at the end of the day, we can't expect our employees to own something that senior leadership is not willing to own. 

Now that said, this is where I think about that whole alignment piece is. How do we leverage our employees to participate in employee resource groups to help us solve for some of those DEI challenges that we have, right? But what I see is this kind of notion of like we're going to be a BRG. And so, like we don't care about that, there's community building and we don't care about these other things. 

It's all about like are they going to drive financial results for the company? Well, guess what? Like we already know this about employee engagement. Do our disengaged employees help you drive business results? No. So, you can't have a BRG without having the foundation of building community, right? Like you don't get discretionary effort out of your diverse employees to help you find and acquire new clients when they don't feel invested in from a career standpoint. 

It just doesn't work and then by the way, if you're just jumping to straight to do the BRG stuff, you kind of have to ask yourself, well then maybe you need to just be directly paying these people to do that, because it's not about having a reciprocal relationship of we're investing in your career, and now you're helping us out doing it, you know, helping us drive commerce. It's like we want you to drive commerce because of your identity. Well, you know what, I think you need to pay people for that if you're not giving back in some other. 

Speaker 1 

Interesting. I like that. What would you say law firms and organizations should keep in mind when they are in the process of aligning ERG or business resource groups to execute and achieve business goals and success metrics? I know that as it relates to employee resource groups, most specifically, it may not be as strong of a focus as it would be for business resource groups. The bottom line, what the overall objective of that particular Affinity Group should be as it relates to the company and its alignment with the goals of the individuals involved in that group? 

Speaker 2 

Well, at the end of the day I really feel that all of these groups have a mission that is about attracting, developing, retaining diverse talent, fill in the blank for whatever the group is, and to connect the firm to our community in whatever way that looks like. Right now, let's take it from a firm perspective that might be connecting to clients. That might be having cultural competency to better support existing clients, right, but it's sort of, I look at it as is you can't do one without doing the other, so there needs to be that lens of holistic focus. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, I love that. As it relates to business goals, you mentioned something. Listeners Jayzen did an awesome job of presenting. He has a particular, is it a program, Jayzen? Think like a CEO? Is that one of your programs? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, exactly. I mean my mantra for ERG is to think like a CEO, right? And so, when we talk about business results like, let's be clear, the CEO, the main partners of a firm, there's other things other than financial results that they're looking at right? Because we look at an entire wheel, right? The first thing that is a CEO or a partner you're looking at is do I have the best and brightest and most talented workforce? 

That's the first step, right? Do I have the best and brightest workforce that then can provide the best products and services for our clients and our consumers in a way that they want to keep coming back to us, that that they want us on retainer. That we are gaining financial results from that. So, there is no CEO out there, that's like “oh, I only want money,” right? Clearly that's what they need to report to shareholders or our partners. 

But at the end of the day, we are all sophisticated in the business space to know that people drive product and product drives, profitability, right? And so. It really needs to be about serving that entire chain and being able to balance. So, when I work with an ERG, what I really work with them on is how do they drive a return on investment, right? Because at the end of the day, that's what partners, that's what shareholders are looking for. 

They're looking for a return on investment in what they're putting into a firm or a corporation and that return on investment can be financial, and it can be around other metrics as well, right? It can be around retention. It could be around efficiency. Which, at the end of the day, the more efficient the better retention, the better people that we hire all of those things end up showing up in profitability. There aren't sustainably long term, profitable companies that aren't doing those things right? Certainly, there short term ways that you can get to profitability, but we're in it for the long haul, right? Like companies are in it to win for the long haul. 

Speaker 1 

Love that. So, and you mentioned retention so let's just stick with that for a moment. In what ways do you believe that effective affinity groups, be it ERG or BRG, what ways do they positively impact employee retention and employee inclusion? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, well, let's just talk about the retention side, because great ERGs hear feedback all of the time that the reason why people are staying at their firm, at least one of those reasons is their participation in ERG. So, I think from a retention standpoint it's all about if people feel that your firm is better in this space. If people feel that your firm is home, they don't have a need to look and like, let's be clear, nowadays, all of your top talent is being poached non-stop. 

I mean, even though we may be having a slowing economy, we are at this historic low of unemployment, like there is not enough great talent. To do the jobs that we want to do and as a result of the pandemic, as a result of George Floyd and you know, Asian hate and things that we have seen, people are really looking twice now and they don't want to work for companies or firms that they don't feel match their values. 

And they and they're attracted even for less money or less career mobility to work for organizations that they believe in the mission and the values of the company. And that's where your groups can play this big element in alignment, right? I mean, let's say it for the past 25 years we have spent a fortune in firms and companies going out to hire more female talent to hire more BIPOC talent. 

But a lot of times they show up and they're like screw this, this is not anything like what you this recruiter told me. Now that I'm here, I don't feel valued. I don't feel that this firm cares about the things that I care about. That was all kind of PR and marketing to get me here. And those people are out the door in 18 months, So this is about, you know, then we have no return on investment on our diversity hiring, so this is that compliment of once you have people, how do you keep them? And then, more importantly, how do you help propel them in in those informal and formal ways? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, absolutely. And with that share with us Jayzen some of your best practice tips. What if there was one nugget and you've already shared so many quite honestly, but as it relates to what it takes to launch and ERG or BRG, do you have any quick best practice tips? Listeners, you can get a lot if you actually, you know, take this program so that that'll be something I'm sure that he'll share at the end of this, but any best practice tips you can share? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, well, I mean I have two things and the first thing is you have to know why, right? Like why are we launching these groups? And while we want to treat our groups equitably, we have to understand what is it that we really want and need from the groups, right? So like let's be clear, do we want to treat our ERGs equitably? Absolutely. But treating them the same doesn't help anyone, right? 

And so if we look at the veteran space like, let's be clear, there's not a lot of veteran discrimination in this country right now. There was, you know, when I was growing up, following Vietnam, but that doesn't mean we don't have inequity in our society, right? We know veterans have huge amounts of homelessness of mental health crises of not being employed, so when we're working with a veterans group, we need to be able to articulate what we need your help on is how do we help military and military families transition into civilian life and translate those skills from the military into private sector type of roles and help them on board into a different life than what they have led, right? 

For most veterans, that's what they grew up in, right? They grew up in military service, so they've missed out on internships, they've missed out on being a coordinator and then being a specialist. They've missed out on those elements that are hallmarks of a corporate or a firm type of experience. Now that is very different than going to a Black or Latinx group where, quite clearly, we need help identifying black and brown talent to bring into organizations. 

Quite frankly, we have challenges serving black and brown clients in an equitable and culturally competent way. Those are two very different things that we're asking from a group, with many womens groups we might say hey, like women advancement has been very great across the the legal profession. But are we still seeing a glass ceiling in the partner arena? So that focus might be different in that space. 

Do we want to treat people equitably? Yes, but we need to give areas of focus. Even with your LGBTQ group, it's not necessarily all about hiring. It's like, do people actually feel safe? And the data tells us that only like 24% of LGBT people are out to at least one person at work and a full third of LGBTQ+ people aren't out at work at all, and that's 25 years after Will and Grace. 

So we kind of have to one pinpoint like where, where can this ERG really play in terms of where we need to make a difference with the firm, because that's critical. I've seen, especially given the politics and everything. We've seen it can be really big where you know an ERG and the firm get really caught up and like are we making a statement about this and are we making a statement about that? And I'm coming back and saying, well, I'm looking at your workforce numbers and like less energy about statements, more effort on recruiting and hiring talent because you are ridiculously underrepresented if I can count on my hand how many black or brown people work above an administrative level in your company. 

That's where we need the help, right? So that's the first thing is let's be targeted and understand the why. The second thing I say is this is the sexy Hollywood entertainment part you know of my brand and in my work is, at the end of the day, you have to engage and excite people. It needs to be like if you're launching - what's your movie premiere And I know people love the Oscars and the Emmys and all of that great stuff. 

But like, let's be clear, why do we have movie premieres? It's not so that people can just have fun and drink. That's how we get people to get excited and get there, but into like buying movie tickets, posting on social media and actually doing and amplifying things that drive business results. So while, yes, we need to have the why and do meaningful stuff, we have to execute it in a way that drives people to want to participate. Otherwise, it's just another boring old thing that you're doing at your company, right? So, you have to have your great marketer’s hat on. 

Speaker 1 

Awesome, that's really good stuff, Jayzen. Before we end our show today, I want you to share with everyone how they can learn more about your program offering as it relates to launching ERG or business resource groups within organizations and our law firms. And I'd also like for you to share where they can actually tune into your podcast Lead With Your Brand. 

Speaker 2 

Absolutely. So, if you are interested in launching, or more importantly revitalizing your employee resource groups, you can check me out at jayzenpatrea.com and I'm sure that will be down in the show notes there. Our Think Like a CEO Program is really a boot camp to help transform from a club mindset to ensure that not only your ERG, but your leadership is thinking of your groups as diverse employees that are here to drive business results, so you can learn all about that at jayzenpatrea.com. 

If you want to listen to the podcast Lead With Your Brand, every single Tuesday, I interview an amazing leader from the world of technology, media, entertainment, and more about their own career journeys and how they have built their personal brand to drive their next career breakthrough and it is available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And you can also learn more at leadwithyourbrand.com where you can subscribe to the podcast. You can watch my TedTalk and make sure that in your career you are not a boring old commodity like coffee, you're a super premium brand like Starbucks. 

Speaker 1 

I love it. In parting, I want you to share with our leaders on this column. In my opinion, everyone that's listening is a leader, right? But for those in said leadership roles, what role specifically would you say that they play as it relates to successful ERGs and BRGs within their organization or firm? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, so if you are a senior leader in an executive, here's the role that you really play, right? You play the role of champion. You play the role of sponsor. And you play the role of advocate, and that's okay, because as executives, we wouldn't be where we are if we weren't able to wear multiple hats, right? But when I look at sponsorship, right? Remember what you can give to your diverse employees is to make those unwritten rules of business clear. 

Be really clear about how they can be successful. Be a sponsor and encourage your senior team in your direct reports to help breakthrough bias so that your underrepresented employees have access to you. And have access to the relationships that allow them to apply their great talents, skills, and passions to the visibility that they need. Now as a champion, I think it's being a role model and it's talking about DEI. DE and I is not just like a department. Now, obviously there's great practitioners and chief diversity officers like yourself, Vickie, but your role is not to own it, right? Just like our CFO is not responsible for making money. 

They're responsible for helping enable and provide expertise. That's the role that you as a champion need to play is how is it that the whole business owns diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as a lens by which we do business and not something that we sometimes do or that is like a page in a PowerPoint, right? How is that a lens through everything that we do from where we do community service and volunteering to where we get our interns from and making sure that you're championing and not just saying “hey I went to an Ivy League school so I only get interns from here.” Well, guess what? We're not going to break the cycle of wealth inequality if we're going to play that game. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, say that again, say it again! 

Speaker 2 

And finally, I think it's that advocate role, right? How are you the ultimate ally and advocate? And being an advocate means that you are advocating for people that aren't like you, which means you gotta listen. You gotta learn and you have to constantly evolve and know that we're all on a journey. We're all here just to get better. I'll kind of close out, Vickie, with a little bit of a story because you know, I had the honor of working for NBC Universal for over 25 years. For 15 years I lead multiple versions of our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group and it was a huge element as to why I was engaged working there. 

It was a huge element to my career trajectory in terms of getting great visibility. When I when I left NBC Universal, I was the executive director of their talent lab, really responsible for helping move and accelerate the top 500 executives at the company. But I still always remember this day over six years ago. And it was, you know, LGBTQ+ Pride month and I was out getting ready. It's the night before the LA Pride parade was going to happen in Los Angeles and I get a push notification from NBC News that there was a mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando, FL and I immediately knew that we would be hugely impacted. 

We had at the time, they have more there now, but it was something like, you know 65,000 employees. It was one of my largest LGBTQ+ ERG chapters was in Orlando, but what I remember the company did so well, was they listened. They listened, and they were willing to learn because what we found by the time Sunday morning came around in Monday morning. Behind the scenes, NBC Universal was doing everything to take care of families that were impacted. 

This was a big huge deal for people in Orlando, right impacting everything from safety and security to people whose family members were impacted there. But I started seeing on social media, I started getting texts. I started getting calls from employees that didn't feel we were going fast enough and that they already knew about victims, right? Now, had I built the brand equity to like raise my hand as an employee resource group leader and say hey we need to talk, Chief Diversity Officer, Amazing Chief Diversity Officer over there in corporate communications, but the difference is, is that senior leadership said yes, of course, while we're spinning plates, we're going to hit the pause button and we're going to listen to what our employees have to say. 

And we're going to iterate on that, and we're going to take action, and we're going to do something. And the actions that we came up with were all about helping people feel included and involved in at the end of the day, six out of 49 people that were killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando were our employees. So, I mean it was a huge thing. The company was always going to do the right thing, but you know what they were willing to get better. They were willing to help communicate in a different way and include their ERG so that people saw not just the actions and the donations, they felt the empathy that they needed to feel in the moment. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, you shared this story, and there's so much power in storytelling, you shared this story at the NGLCC Conference and it it resonated then, and it continues to resonate. Is such a great example of the power behind employee resource groups and I thank you for sharing that with us today. I thank you for joining the show. I would like to circle back at some point next year to invite you back to our podcast, but thank you so much Jayzen for joining us today. Do you have any final parting thoughts that you like to share? You shared so much and so I totally understand if you don't. But anything else you would like to share before we end? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, I mean I guess my final thought and it kind of goes along with the story is, you know we're always asked to make that business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And you know, the reality is, is this business case is the same business case that's been around for like 40 years, right? McKinsey has the data, everyone has got the data, all of the big consulting firms have the data. It always strikes me that it is not just the data, it's not just the head, it's the heart. You know, at the end of the day we need to change hearts and we need to change minds and we only change hearts by great storytelling and being able to be authentic and being able to share our own experiences to help other people learn and to be able to listen to other people's experiences so that we can all learn and grow. 

Speaker 1 

Yes, Jayzen, I 100% agree with you. Storytelling is so amazing. It is so powerful it enables us to see ourselves in others, but it also enables us to have more empathy for others perspectives based on our different journeys, our different experiences. So, I thank you again for that. 

Speaker 2 

Of course, thanks for having me on the show, Vickie. 

Speaker 1 

And thank you listeners for tuning in to another episode of Not Your Average DEI Podcast with Jayzen Patria. I'm Vickie Hubbard and we'll talk soon.