Creating a Positive Culture in Organizations with Kim Flanery-Rye

As a Culture and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) practitioner, Kim Flanery-Rye shared her insights on creating a positive culture in organizations during the podcast. She emphasized that leaders should prioritize culture from the beginning, rather than considering it as an afterthought. Kim pointed out that while culture may vary between organizations, it plays a significant role in their success. In smaller organizations, C-level executives have a more direct influence on culture, making it easier to observe and manage. Meanwhile, in larger organizations, creating and maintaining a positive culture may be more challenging due to their size and structure. 

The podcast's discussion primarily revolved around gender parity in the workplace and how to audit and address systemic issues that prevent women from succeeding in their careers. We discussed the "leaky pipeline" or "leaky faucet" phenomenon, where women's representation decreases as we move up the leadership positions. We also talked about various factors that may contribute to women leaving their careers, such as the pay gap, lack of parental leave support, and other systemic issues that make it difficult for women to succeed. 

We also discussed how women tend to do more event organizing, diversity and inclusion work, and join more ERG groups than men. However, these efforts are often undervalued and not compensated during annual reviews or promotion time, leading to the "leaky pipeline" phenomenon. As a result, mid-level women tend to leave the workforce to start their own businesses due to the difficulty of breaking through the glass ceiling, caregiving responsibilities that still tend to fall on women, and burnout. Finally, we discussed how the World Economic Forum is a platform where discussions about gender equity, climate change, poverty, and justice are happening, and there is a lot of action being taken to address these issues. 

When MyKimisms Founder, Kim “Kimfer” wasn’t offered a chair on the board, she created one. Kim is the first-ever elected VP of DEI to the Board of Directors in over 70 chapters across the nation for the American Marketing Association and has paved the way to make the DEI board role a standard for other chapters. Her approach to DEI work stems from her experience within the corporate business world and knowing that a company’s culture is the heart and soul of an organization. Without a thoughtful and purposeful strategy to lead the culture, it will develop on its own without intent or approval. This is why Kim is focused on changing the way corporations address DEI and is working toward building inclusive and equitable business practices. 

• Social media handles
  • LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimflaneryrye
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/myKimisms
  • Instagram: 

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I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and  an entrepreneur. I work with Universities on Organizations to transition students to the corporate world   and building successful leadership pipelines ensuring a healthy financial future.

If you're interested in coordinating or working with me on keynotes, workshops, or on a one on one basis, you can go to my website www.sirishakuchimanchi.com

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Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome to the Women Career and Life podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sirisha Kuchimanchi, a former tech executive at Texas Instruments, a Fortune 200 company, a speaker, a working mom, and an ever reader. In this podcast, you will hear stories and practical advice for you to achieve your career and life goals. I also wanna say a big thank you to our listeners for continuing to support this podcast and making it in the top 30% of Spotify podcasts. If you wanna continue to support this indie produced show, you can either buy me a cup of chai, I am not a coffee drinker, or you can become a monthly or annual sub. You will find more information in the show notes. I'm so excited to have Kim for Flannery Rice. She's joining us from Seattle and she looks amazing. I just love her look right now, and we connected over LinkedIn and other avenues, and I've heard her speak in other forums, including Linda. LinkedIn live sessions a seat at the table. So Kim, for thank you for being here. I wanted to dive in and really learn about what your journey has been because you are a big advocate for the de and I space. You have what you're called your Kim citizens, and you have your idea ways of doing processes and basically systems for organizations to onboard and be very effective in that de and i space. So gimme some backstory on how you got. Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you today. I think, for me, my background is pretty interesting in the sense that I did not have a linear process in how I got here. I have had experiences in. Creative fields. I actually have my background in my bfa, bachelor of Fine Arts and was a painter in the past. And but my career path was always interesting that while my artist artistry was happening, my career path was definitely more in I would say industry. I worked for places like T-Mobile. I've been a vice president and. Creative director for a B2B digital marketing agency. That last bit I think is what really helped transition me into what I am today, which is a d e I and culture practitioner. Especially when I was in that agency, I was really focused on creating culture for my team. We had a really phenomenal founders that were really focused on that, and I had the opportu. To really build a creative team from the ground up. And during that process, really looking at diversity as an important aspect. And also if we're putting together marketing and PR and all of that ar area of advertising, making sure that we are not tokenizing people and that we're really looking at it from a inclusive and. Perspective. And so switching from that as a primary, being a creative first and then looking at from culture and d e I as a lens and flipping that to now being d e i as the primary and really looking at brands and culture and organizations was a pretty easy shift for me. and as someone who also have experienced poverty twice in my lifetime before I was in the age of 15 from the first time in South Korea before I was adopted into the Midwest farm community here in Iowa and experienced the farm crisis in the. early eighties, so I think that just helped me look at all these different intersections from what it's like to be not only someone who looks like me, but have had various experiences and intersections in my life. It's a very transitional journey, right? Through what you experience as a young adult, a child, and then going through all the transitions you've had. You touched on something that I thought was very important. You talked about organization, cultures, there's a lot of discussion around cultures leaving aside that there's layoffs going on and people are incredibly impacted, especially people who are from here who are on visas, a lot of change going through. during Covid, cultures like Uber and with Tesla and Twitter, there's a lot of culture pieces going on and how leaders show up, how they engage their organiz. how they just set up systems that support them. I think it would be insightful to see how, from two aspects, like if you have a very massive organization, what small changes can you make so that trickles down. And for someone who's starting up thinking of, say, starting a company or on their founders or entrepreneur journey, what should I be thinking right off the bat? oftentimes we think of culture as a later aspect. When I. but in some ways you need to do it right from your first hire so that you set that up. what is some guidance you have on that space? Yeah, absolutely. I love this phrase that's probably many people are familiar with but it's called culture Eat Strategy for Breakfast. And I've seen that over and over again in organizations where they may have the strongest May have really strong metrics and things like that, but the culture of the organization and leaders who understand that culture is an important aspect that you have to be really mindful of. It really shows up differently I think from organization to organization. And for me I would say if you are a startup, It's the most opportune time to really think about it from the start. Oftentimes when you are a startup, you are busy wearing so many hats and you're a small team, so you often think oh, I don't have to worry about that. Culture is something that you have to do when you're really large, like you reference, but that actually is not true. It is really. Thoughtfully have to be done because culture has its mind of its own is what I say, is that if you aren't really thoughtful about how you approach your culture, it will be implicit culture rather than explicit culture. It's what people pick up and how they decide to show up and do things. That makes it. What it ends up being. And so I would say smaller organization, it is definitely way easier to see because your C level often will have such a strong impact on that organization as you get into a bigger organization. You're talking about like the large enterprises. Like the Microsofts and the Amazons and things like that in the world, and especially me being in Seattle, those are two, two of the biggest organizations here. You do see that leadership can make a big difference, satya, when he came over in Microsoft several years ago, it was pretty amazing to watch a huge ship. Like Microsoft making its shifts because of that leader. But what's interesting with these large enterprises is that every people manager creates microcultures. Again, intentionally or not intentionally. And so it's more dependent sometimes obviously the leader the c e o, they have to have intentional culture approach, and that strength of that has to just reverberate down through each of the different business units the leadership within them. Without it, then you do, you end up creating. Fractured microcultures that do not represent what you want as a whole as a company. Very true. I, there's this saying that goes right, you join a job for a company, but you often leave it because of your boss or your culture microculture, as you described. Yeah. That's what defines us, because that's all we get to see. You rarely interface with that ceo. So what can people in this microcosm, both as individuals and like management do when they're doing this? Yeah. It def definitely depends on if you are thinking about it with culture in mind. And for me, culture and d e I are intricately combined. They're not something, I think oftentimes people confuse diversity, equity, and inclusion as a program. Something that you do on this. Side, but everything about culture is impacted by all the things that you do. And you can't just leave d e I over there just saying, Hey, it's a personal learning journey, and that's what we do. You have to think about it really in a systemic way and systems-based way within an organization. And for managers and people people, leaders in general. I think it's really important to understand that intersection of D E I. The more you understand that and then have really strong emotional intelligence, right? EQ and that idea that you bring all of that together is really what looks at culture from the start. So what you were talking about, people leave. because of the managers that they have. So how are you showing up as an advocate for your employees? I say that managers inherently have to be allies, and so how are you showing up as an ally for your people and how thoughtfully are you really thinking about cultivating your culture and how it's aligning to the company's mission and vision and values? the manager sets the tone in so many ways because it can be in that meeting, in the staff meeting when someone tries to speak up and they're not heard and you're not advocating for them or giving them their space or reinforcing the idea. Or maybe the idea isn't what you think it should be, but you could have that conversation offline. It's how you come across the tone of voice, the language you. that people see you showing up and sometimes it's nipping it in the bud when someone. doesn't behave what you think is the right cultural aspect so that it's dealt with and people see it because there's always this fine line, you work right about doing it in public versus private, and each is a nuanced approach. Totally. I get that. But sometimes you have to make certain stances in certain forums just because people understand what the culture of the organization is, while being incredibly respectful of everybody and everybody, the systems. Because you, you can easily forget that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the main thing about culture is like, You can have the most beautiful values written and you have posters all around your organization, but if no one's following them because of implicit culture, so explicit culture, like I said, you'll be on your, maybe your handbooks and your values and all of that, but the implicit culture is what you are just talking about. Culture is where people identify a situation. They will correct someone. And then because they're corrected, they will mimic and then they will turn around and coach someone else correct their behavior, et cetera. So it's like the circular thing that happens. That could be positive, right? What you were just talking about. Hey, stopping a meeting if something is not going in the right direction, and things like that. And being an advocate for someone. Or you could be where they're the ones who s. You know, the women in the room or things like that. So e can be mimicked in a positive or a negative way, but that's literally what happens. People watch. It's that parental things people talk about. It's not what you say, it's what you do really impacts in organizations. Yeah, very true. I think there's a lot of parallels in that, right? How you run at home and at work in a lot of ways. I had a guest, Elena Percival, she's a c e o co-founder of Women Who Code, and she made the same comment about setting your culture early on. Like the example she used is, when you're making those first hires and someone needs parental leave or is having a. you, you need to have those sort of policies already thought of because you can't wait to scale and think about it, because obviously you're thinking about it on the fly and you haven't set the tone because there's so much, it's great a lot of the conversations that are going on, because obviously when I started my corporate journey, there weren't those conversations and. To be frank, those thoughts didn't strike me then either. It's as I step away from it that I see more and more of what's going on, and I'm glad to hear them and be part of those changes. So when you're thinking of culture, I think it's, if for anyone listening, I think if you're starting something, think of how you wanna set it up and to your systems and processes that you are suggesting as well on setting up not just a guidebook, which you obviously need. but setting the tone and that conversation constantly. Absolutely. And the earlier you can start, the better. Which is why if you think about some of the newer organizations that if you think about it from a very d e I perspective, right? So companies who started. Maybe post George Floyd's murder are, have been better set up in how they think about anti-racism in their organization versus organizations that had to go backwards and go, okay, what is our stance? What are we doing? How do we do it? And then how do we change our systems? This, it's something that's been set for however many years. It's so much harder to go backwards to correct than it is to just have it as a standard moving forward. And so I think that's the difference between companies that are just now starting. Think about all of these things now helps you to really be set up to be successful. Very true. And it's something for us also think about it's, but to also if you've been long established, it's never too late to correct and. I think to your point, D and I is like the spy of your organization. It should be very much the core of it, the culture. It's not an initiative which seems to be what's making the headlines now as a initiative. It's not a sidebar note that you write in your footnotes and your CliffNotes Something that you should make it absolutely make it very much an integral part. So when you're talking about supporting, I think you, you brought. There is women supporting women and men supporting women allyship in both ways, but it does very often manifest itself very differently because I think there's this notion, and maybe, I'm sure there may be some truth to it, that not all women support women because we feel like we're fighting for us one seat at that table that's there and stuff that other nine seats that are there. So what can we do to manifest this and how do we show up? I think it's in all in the little things that we do. Do you recommend your friend for the job that you heard about but you are not maybe the right fit for? And how do you advocate for them and put in a good word or whatever other ways you think it, it works itself. Yeah. Sponsorship I think is extremely important. So I know there are people talk about women need. We need mentorship, obviously, but we need more than just mentorship. We need sponsorship. And the main difference between that is mentoring is this relationship that you have one-on-one with someone. Maybe you have multiple relationships, but it's really that one-on-one. And helping that individual sponsorship is then taking that relationship that you have and. Speaking about them opening doors for them when they're not in that room with you. I think that is such an important aspect. So understanding what sponsorship looks like and knowing that it's not that whole idea of it's, once you take one slice, then. that pie gets smaller. There's, that's not actually true. We have to have to have abundance mindset. So if you are a woman who fought their way, which often we do, fought your way to that one seat, rather than trying to push women back so that they don't take your seat. What can you do really to advocate, like you said, the other nine seats that are there. how can you get more seats open for those women? I think it's a lot easier if you haven't. Fight so hard in the past. So if, again, same thing about organizations starting now versus older, you can change any time during the whole process of your history. But think about it now is, are you mentoring people and are you doing more than mentoring? Are you sponsoring people? Because then it is really important then to make sure that kind of environment. Culture of women supporting women I think is super important. And what's interesting, like you talked about your our counterparts or maybe our male allies also, sometimes even more important because they often have. The more power and position power, there's more of them. And so having them to really understand what their advocacy and their sponsorship can look like and show up, showing up, I think is extremely important to make sure that we have more seats for women and hopefully one of these days get some gender parody out there. And that's a. important aspect. And then I say also, if you're a mentor, I mentor lots of different women, and one of the things that I require are out of them is, are you able to commit to mentor and sponsor others when we are done with our relationship? That you have to give back that mentality of giving back. I'm, hopefully I'm providing you that time and energy you will not need. The whole time cuz you will also grow and will become peers. We can be peer mentors, but that means you have to give back and find mentors of your own and sponsoring them into the next level. Yeah. It's a great way to pass your own knowledge and pass, I guess a leave a legacy behind as well, right? In some ways that is, and you're setting the culture because you are setting the expectations so that's what. that's what they implicitly know that they have to do. And then it just goes forth going like that as they move forward. And when I think about it, the other aspect I'm thinking of it is when we are talking about these nine seats in one seat, actually, frankly I do not wanna have this conversation or even have to host this podcast right, because then next conversation is completely unnecessary to have. That would be great. I talk myself out of this podcasting I do I'm okay with that. If it all reaches gender parity and I think there's this concept of the leaky pipeline or this leaky faucet that's moving I think colleges, everything in the statistics shows that colleges women are around 50% of the graduates. But as obviously as you go down the chain or go up the chain as you wanna look at it, it keeps reducing 40%, 20%, 3%, just the gender parity decreases for various reasons. One is as life changes and situations come for support and other reasons, they may make the decision. Sometimes it is driven by pay gap discussions in a very broad way. they're trying to make childcare or pay decision saying, is it worth going back to work, parental leave support. There are so many other things we don't obviously think about beyond just, Hey, I want to take care of my children, which might be the only aspect, or there might be other nuanced approaches driving these decisions. So how do we. I think individuals can grow some of it, but really what do organizations do? Like how do they audit, how do they look at what it looks like when they're doing these hiring practices or growing the leadership pipeline as they look at it? Yeah. The leaky talent pipeline is, it is a reality. We know this. If you think about the women in the world, we actually outnumbered technically by men, but we know that about 80% I think of. Jobs out there are really men. 80% of men are in the talent pool Will, while only about 50 ish percent of women are in the talent pool and leaving, and we know right now too with that's been going on. They are leaving that mid-level to high level women in organizations are leaving faster, especially post pandemic. I think, yeah, childcare is definitely one of those area, but I think assuming that childcare is the only reason, I think is also a disservice to women in general. There's so many systemic issues within organizations that have been set up for women to not succeed, and he was built that way. right? The old boys network clubs, what have you. And also if you think about it in the sense of when women were allowed, and I'm gonna use that word, allowed to enter the job fields that were beyond rudimentary, we don't have as long of a history. as men have to set up that network and doing all of that, right? So we are talking about from a systems perspective, when I come into organizations, there are a couple of different things I look at. So when we're talking about from an hiring, so let's start with the hiring perspective. I look at it as where are the choke points coming through? Because there is, we know there's biases that get built in. So when we're looking at it, and I'm gonna use this general numbers for right now, let's. 80% of your new position and and submissions that are coming in are men and 20% are women. Great. Okay. Not great, but I'm gonna use that as an example. So that's what's happening in the first line of coming into a company's job. Then what you look at in the next round is, okay, so who makes it past that first round? Is this still 80 20% or did it become 90 10 and then past that into the final rounds? Are you still at 80 20 or are you at. 99 and 1%. That's how you know that there's something happening at a systemic level within your organizations. So looking at those kind of data, because most organizations have data to know who came in where, who they said no to, and who finally were provided a role. And then from the other perspective, once you're in the organization, again, from an auditing perspective, looking at organizations, you can look at an employee life cycle reporting. When were they hired? When when were they provided a promotion? Was it, you're looking for deltas? Were women having a slower progression in their career with that promotion? What about again, the salary gap? In wage gap? If you're thinking about every time someone was provided a salary increase, what was the delta? The male counterpart and the female counterpart, if we're just looking at the binary of the two for right now. And so those kind of reporting is really important to know not only the frequency of the gender that's being moved forward and the difference in pay in which that's happening. So when you're looking at the data, you, it can tell you, oh wow. We have, for example, promoted Joe three times in the five years while we. Jane once in that five years. Why? Let's look at that. Maybe it was individual, but is it systemic? Is it happening across the board in the gender divide and thinking about, oh, okay. So we look at our male counterparts and say they have an average of 5%. Annually while the women are getting 3% increase, that you can look at it from a more broad, systemic way in an organization. That's how you really check organizational approach in a systems perspective of knowing is equity actually at play, which is the e i, right? the statistics show what men get promoted like every year and a half, and a woman I think every two to three years. So absolutely. It's a double thing, right? Like you said, first of all, you're not getting the promotion and your pay gap has two ways. One is if you're not paid equally, but every time that person gets promoted, they get a hike. So the delta keeps growing from a different aspect. It's not just a promotion, it's the opportunity and the sort of the revenue, the impact also in that standpoint, that's constantly, creating this bigger and bigger gap. Absolutely. And that's where the sponsorship, like you said, comes in. Because if you're not talking about the women and advocating for them, or even thinking about it intentionally, then it's something that you might miss. And just to be clear, I think people often mistake that when we are saying D and i, that we want the women to get this fairness bonus thing. No, that's not what we are saying. We're saying they're already incredibly capable and. So many things are you looking at everything they're doing? Because I met someone recently, often they're very engaged in D N I initiatives and other things in outreach things, recruiting, other avenues for companies that they forget to value that time that is taken for the organization, but not helping that microcosm that they're working in and not to leave. Impact outside. So you are measuring the right things and you're looking at advocacy and who is the right person and where are they manifesting their leadership and their impact, not just in this role, but in other avenues that might still benefit you. Yeah, women in general tend to do a lot more of the non-pro promotional work, which often is called the office house. Yeah. And so part of that is how organizations often set up, what do you value in your on, in your employees and their contribution to the organization, which is why also from a systems perspective, when you're looking at. Most companies have annual reviews. What's on those annual reviews? Is it only job goal related or do you have value recognition in there? And what kind of activity are they also doing? And. Women tend to join more e r G groups. They tend to do more organizing of events for the company. They tend to take on more of the d e I kind of efforts in general, and, but it all helps an organization, but it's never really looked at as if it is in an annual review process, as if it's something that is valuable, it's value. And someone want, people want them to do it. but is it valuable in the way is it valuable and valued in the same way when it comes to those job annual processes, quarterly processes, or whatever the systems in which it's been created? During compensation time and promotion time you're talking about? Yeah, I, yeah. I just recently recorded an interview with Brenda Peiser. She's a professor who, they wrote the book, the No Club, which is talking about non-pro promotable work. Yeah. And it's something for us to think about. So for those who may be listening, think about, it would be good to audit your processes because some of what Kima is saying is it's not all under your case to audit, because there's organizations, but you can see what work you're doing and making. You are getting credit for it and maybe even think about asking if you're getting paid equally. I think it's still okay because I know those are awkward conversations. I've had some of them myself, but I think it is valuable to see if you are getting compensated because you are spending a lot of time at work and making sure that is a fair and equitable place to have. There was a comment you made. You said a lot of mid-level women are leaving the workforce. Why do you think they're leaving the workforce? There's multiple reasons that are out there. There's lots of studies that's happening right now, and especially we've seen it more and more because of post pandemic. Part of it is the one we're talking about, the leaky pipeline again. So there is a glass ceiling that we hit at mid-level and it is really hard to break through. And so there are more women that leave the dog force to start their own business. There are more startups created by women. than there are by men. They are trying to create their own opportunities and to because they're tired of playing in that field of whatever it is that they need to do to crawl up the ladder, and fight for every inch. The idea of also, again, from a systemic per. if you are a caretaker, and I don't mean just mothers, if you're a caretaker for for family members that tend to still land on the women, and so women are often, then the more the higher you go up in the ladder, the more oftentimes the demands of the. takes from you more hours, more, all of that, even though we all talk about, work-life balance, that stuff is really hard in general. I think the further you are up on that ladder and more expectations for women in general, and so there's part of that's happening, they're getting ultimately exhausted is like, why fighting? Why fight against. Why fight against that if I can go do my own thing? I think that's oftentimes what's happening. Yeah. A lot of burnout as well. And other aspects. So I see that you go to the World Economic Forum and have discussions around DNI space. So I wonder what the conversation is at that level, because that's the in some ways the intellectual capital, the, the. power capital. There's a lot of conversations with these people who are deciding either garment policy, company policies or setting up the stage for the future. So what is that's going on and how are you helping direct some of that conversation and what can we expect in the future? Yeah. What's interesting about I think the World Economic Forum in Davos it's there's a juxtaposition that happens. There are lots of people that are trying to. great things for the world, right? They're trying to hit all of the S D G goals and thinking about poverty and lots of climate change right now. Lots of climate change conversation and how do we do it in a way that actually makes sense for the world, but also you don't have to do it just purely out of philanthropic way you can make money at it. That was the biggest thing that was happening, which was, I found fascinating. Or when people are talking about because of the. Climate change and talking about how, for example fashion industry is one of the largest contributor right, of destroying the world right now. But people are doing that while they're showing up in their high-end fashionable items on And so it, so I find it to be very interesting juxtaposition of this wealth and people talking about the ideas of change. and then how change actually is happening. But what's fascinating is that when you go to the World Economic Forum, there's obviously this massive congress that's happening and those are the ones that are making the big world, decisions like you're talking about. And then there is this part of the ethos of the World Economic Forum where. other thousands of people that come, that are outside of the Congress that are trying to make those changes happen in real time. And what's fascinating about that is all the conversations that are happening around gender equity, about climate change, about poverty, about justice, all of these things that are happening. What I found really What I found phenomenal is that, yes, there's lots of talks there, but there's a lot of action that are happening. I'm still having meetings with people, and this happened in January, right? So even though it happened in January, there's still meetings happening now about talking with people, how they're trying to make changes happen, how we're trying to make those changes happen in continuously do so it's a little bit of. interesting place to be because again, back to the climate change, we were talking about how do we look at our carbon footprint while people are flying into this place? And obviously, you know what flying happens, people bringing their personal jets and so it's a it's an interesting place to be to have this conversation. And it was my second year this year. And yeah, that, I still find that to be somewhat unsettling but also very much energize. Yes. And you touched on something that I was gonna ask you because I was reading up on it as well, and. Interesting. I think it's a contradiction in terms, yes. When you're talking about climate change and sustainability and then you have thousands of private planes flying into this tiny part of the world. When you're talking about the same thing about saving the planet and. It's wait, you just said that, but why are you flying these thousands of privates in here? You're talking about fast fashion and expensive fashion and not recycling. Maybe they should have a theme saying you just have to upcycle your clothes and show up or something. Yeah, Absolutely. So like that. I just found it really, it's such a juxtaposition. That's the best word I can come up you will find pretty much what I like the best though. You find very much like-minded people who really do wanna make the change. but there is something to be said when you put like-minded people in a singular place. There is something that has, that's a multiplier effect that happens, right? Lots of energy. You can just feel it, feel the thought, the innovation, the conversations and the way that people were really wanting to move through the. Large big audacious, large problems that they're trying to solve in the world. And in some ways it really helps that everyone is in one place. So when you're having these ideas, you have access to the people who are going to help drive some of that. So it's, it's a collective, as you called it. Yeah. It's a powerful force. It's a powerful forum. It has a huge impact there. There are some juxtaposition, contradictions that happen. Yeah. But for something so massive, We have to understand and I won't say deal with it, but I'm sure someone will work with it. But the they evocative change they can drive is so impactful. It's, it would be nice to see as it continues to flow through what that looks like. We don't have a lot of leeway to make those decisions slowly, so they have to happen pretty quickly. So absolutely Absolut driving that. So as we are getting close to wrapping up, this is a question I ask every guest, what advice would you give your 21 year old self? Yeah, I, I think for me, I would say, Hey, Kim, just keep on following your dreams, following your passion. Follow people that are you. That are empowering because you'll get to a point where you're gonna lead. Yep. And it happens. Life happens for a reason. And for me, I think telling my 20 year old, that's a really important thing. There's lots happened for me and as a youth and know that all of. No matter how hard it might have been to swallow at the time, like it happens and you are okay. You're okay. And it'll teach you something. And what is the one word you would use to describe yourself? I would say the word is empath. That I have really strong empathy for the others and just feel, I feel all the feels. Because that really ties into everything you do, and what impact you're driving and. the path that you're taking as well and Kim, if someone wants to reach out to you, how do they connect with you? Thank you for asking. Obviously you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me literally if you probably put in kimer. Inclusion equals is my handle for Instagram. I would say LinkedIn and Instagram are two main areas. And then of course our website inclusion equals.com. Thank you. This has been a very fascinating conversation, not just talking so much about individuals, but a lot of focus on culture and organizations and how we impacted in our microcosm and in our macrocosms as we work through. And for those of you listening, as FIFA was saying, think about how you are showing up, how you advocate for yourself, how you set up the space around you, whether you are an individual contributor or a leader, because everyone is watching and. and setting up that culture as you're growing together as you steer that ship, because everything starts with small change and it's very intentional and making space for others because this is a very woman focused podcast. Just making sure that you're advocating and lifting other women up and being that sponsor them and making sure that you have access to sponsors as well. we always get over mentored unsponsored. So asking for what you want. I think we are at that time where we shouldn't wait for someone to come in, give us the opportunity as much as ask and seize it ourselves. So thank you so much Kim, for here, for being here today. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for the conversation. Really appreciate it. This is an indie podcast and if you really enjoy the content, you can help me with production by supporting. You can buy me a cup of chai. I'm not really a coffee drinker, or you can enable me by subscribing for either a monthly or an annual plan as well. Thank you for doing this, and don't forget to share this episode and put in this reviews what you liked. What was your key takeaway? That's really what I wanna know. I wanna know how this is impacting you and what's infinitesimal changes you're seeing in your life. You can always reach me through Instagram by sending me at BM at Women Career and. Thank you so much for tuning in. See you next time.